The News Is Not Free: 14 Journalists Murdered in 2014
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan police commander opened fire Friday on two Associated Press journalists inside a security forces base in eastern Afghanistan, killing prize-winning photographer Anja Niedringhaus and wounding veteran correspondent Kathy Gannon.
Niedringhaus, 48, who had covered conflict zones from the Balkans in the 1990s to Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and was part of a team of AP photographers who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, died instantly of her wounds.
AP photographer killed, reporter wounded
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has counted 14 murders in 2014 of journalists directly related to their work. It doesn’t count the ones that survived attacks and were seriously injured. In 2013 there were 70 murdered journalists.
The news is not free, a fact that few in Silicon Valley appreciate, as they build robots that grab headlines and text, and seek to harvest news content for free and for their profit.
We have no good business model for news organizations to continue funding high quality journalism. This is a very serious issue.
