Well, here we are. The end of the year. That time of the year in which the media reminds us that they are the firemen running into burning buildings to capture the dying words of victims and belittle them for their banality and boorishness.

This year, an organization called “Reporters Without Borders,” which, as best as I can tell is dedicated to being the pivot man in this particular circle jerk, has published a report which identifies the most dangerous nations for reporters to work. Unsurprising in the Age of Trump, the United States made it onto the list.

The world’s five deadliest countries for journalists include three — India, Mexico and, for the first time, the United States — where journalists were killed in cold blood, even though those countries weren’t at war or in conflict, the group said.

“The hatred of journalists that is voiced … by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

How did the United States suddenly become a virtual killing field for members of the Fourth Estate:

The United States joined the ranks of the world’s deadliest countries for the media this year, with a total of six journalists killed. Four journalists were among the five employees of the Capital Gazette, a local newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, who were killed on 28 June when a man walked in and opened fire with a shotgun. He had been harassing the newspaper for six years on Twitter about a 2011 article that named him. It was the deadliest attack on a media outlet in the US in modern history. Two other journalists, a local TV anchor and cameraman, were killed by a falling tree while covering Subtropical Storm Alberto’s extreme weather in North Carolina in May

The best that you can say about this public onanism is that it is simply designed to try to bolster the favorite media narrative that somehow President Trump through his relentless criticism and righteous contempt has created a climate where it is dangerous to work. If that were true, one would think either bodies would be ricked up like cordwood, Jim Acosta would be doing a two-and-a-half gainer from the ramp of a C-130 over the North Atlantic, and the press would be a helluva lot more circumspect about its behavior. But none of this happened because despite most of them being tendentious douchebags of limited intelligence, they are actually much safer than other occupations.

Let’s go to their own rules:

Compiled by RSF every year since 1995, the annual round-up of abusive treatment and deadly violence against journalists is based on precise data. We gather detailed information that allows us to affirm with certainty or a great deal of confidence that the death, detention, abduction, or disappearance of each journalist was a direct result of their journalistic work.

By their own rubric, the shootings at the Capital Gazette should not be included. The shooter, one Jorge Ramos, shot up the Gazette because he was angry that a 2012 lawsuit he’d filed against the paper had been dismissed. He’d threatened the paper repeatedly over that case and had been served with a restraining order. The people involved in the story he’d sued the paper over had moved on. No one killed was involved in the Ramos story and none of them were killed because of their reporting. A nutter walked in and shot the place up because he was holding a 6-year-old grudge over a lawsuit. Likewise, the tree in North Carolina didn’t kill two reporters because of their reporting.

6 journalists died on the job in the U.S. last year. 4 were victims of that psychopath who shot up an Annapolis newspaper. The other 2 were killed by *a falling tree*.

Does that mean the US should be included on the same list of "dangerous for a free press" as Putin's Russia? https://t.co/YmRlFMX8Ng

— Jeff B, fightin' the COVID one bootleg at a time (@EsotericCD) December 19, 2018

Reporters Without Borders’ methodology ranking U.S. among most dangerous places for journalists is worthy of some good, old-fashion journalism skepticism. Four dead in a mass shooting, two dead from a falling tree. Tragic but US press is robust and free. https://t.co/mlyGLVM1MM

— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) December 19, 2018

A falling tree does not reflect “hatred of journalists,” unless Reporters Without Borders wants to argue that the tree aimed for those two unfortunate souls.https://t.co/jYmET14v1K

— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) December 19, 2018

Reporting may be dangerous in some countries. The United States isn’t one of them. This is just another example of a formerly useless and irrelevant organization striving to become useless but talked about by slamming the United States and dealing a tangential slap at President Trump.

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