Citizen  journalist Mazhar Tayyara, died in Homs massacre in February 2012 The death toll of journalists in Syria is mounting day by day. A total of 33 professional and citizen journalists have been killed since the start of the uprising in Syria in March last year.The past few weeks have been particularly deadly, says a special report by the Paris-based press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Around 10 citizen journalists have been killed since late May.
The approximation is due, says the group, to \"the difficulty of verifying any information coming out of Syria. The regime has managed to impose a media blackout by posing many obstacles to visits by foreign journalists.\"
In a detailed and lengthy report, RSF lists the deaths of several journalists with help from the Doha Centre for Media Freedom.
“’We firmly condemn the remorseless crackdown and accelerating cycle of violence in what is now a civil war,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Freely and independently reported news and information are now an absolute necessity but they are unfortunately getting rarer and rarer. June saw the death of an unprecedented number of citizen journalists who have been sacrificing their lives to provide video footage of the uprising, the crackdown and now the military operations by armed groups fighting the ruthless Assad regime.
“We would also like to stress the difficulty of verifying any information coming out of Syria. The regime has managed to impose a media blackout by posing many obstacles to visits by foreign journalists – who are exposed to great danger if they come – and by jailing Syrian professional journalists who refuse to relay government propaganda. As for the activists who try to report and document the regime’s atrocities, they are hunted down relentlessly by the security services, which kill them or sometimes torture them to death.”