Is Journalism Dangerous to Your Health?

How many of us want to travel (outside of our own state) to cover news stories? The chance to go to a different country would seem like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and many of us would probably jump at it. However, have we stopped to think of the consequences?

If you've looked at the news lately, you've probably noticed that reporters in Mexico are have been "disappearing" or are being murdered. This has been ongoing since 2006, when their new president came to office, Felipe Calderon. A South Carolina newspaper recently ran an article about how reporters in Mexico are being urged to use extra caution. What are they being murdered for?

Reporting on the drug trafficking problems. Since 2000, at least 65 reporters (in various fields) have been murdered, sometimes seemingly at random. This makes Mexico the deadliest country in the world for news people, according to a report from a Utah news station.

To us (or so I'm assuming), reporting on something such as drug trafficking doesn't seem like that big of an issue, but we are sitting a couple thousand miles away from the problem.

So why are journalists being killed for doing their jobs?

This is nothing new, and people have been persecuted over this for years. Do you remember Daniel Pearl who was beheaded over his investigation into Al-Qaeda a few years back? He had traveled to a war-torn country, tried to do his job, and was subsequently killed for doing so.

Would you be willing to travel to a foreign country, is you knew there was a chance you wouldn't be coming back? Do these kind of reports scare you, as a potential reporter, about what could happen? Or does it make you want it that much more? Just because the United States embraces journalists (for the most part), does not necessarily mean that the rest of the world does.