Is Journalism a Dangerous Profession?

[malbasi]

Pitch

Summary

How dangerous is the profession of journalism? We will look at data from the Committee to Protect Journalists about media workers who have died in the line of duty and examine how often deaths occur, where they occur and what are the primary causes. We will also use data from another source to add context. This first draft will use police deaths as a comparison.

Details

Possible headline(s):

Data set(s): https://cpj.org/data/killed/ http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/causes.html

Code repository: I'm receiving an error from Github desktop that prevents me from pushing a new folder. I have a support ticket with GH to fix the error and will update with my repository once that's complete.

Possible problems/fears/questions: Too many bar charts!

Comparing the deaths of US police officers to world-wide journalists is an apples and oranges comparison. Im hoping that I can make that clear in the charts and copy, but I may need to change tack in the future.

Work so far

Journalist Deaths by nationality

Journalist Death by Year

Police Death by Year

Checklist

This checklist must be completed before you submit your draft.

• [ ] I have already spent time with my data set, opening it, exploring it, etc
• [ ] I have created a "DIARY.md" file to save links and list all of the terrible, no good problems I come across
• [ ] My issue links to my data set(s)
• [ ] My issue links to my code repository
• [ ] My issue explains what I'd like to explore in the data set
• [ ] My issue includes images - either inspiration or what I've done so far

[Weihua4455]

On the third floor of Newseum in Washington D.C., there is a Journalism Memorial, a giant glass wall engraved with the names of 2000+ reporters/editors who died while on an assignment. You might want to check out their data and add that to the one from CPJ.

That said, I think you found a really important topic. I'm curious how you found nationality though, because it seems CPJ listed location of each journalists' death, and that could be different from their nationality.

I agree that there are many bar charts lol. But to make them look cleaner, you could make all the bars the same color, especially since the colors don't have any meaning.

I'm not sure what to compare with the death of journalists ... one thing you could do is to find out how many journalists are working in each country can calculate the death rate, then it will be a lot easier to compare with the mortality rate of a country/profession. But I'm not sure how you'll go about finding that data :(

[dbaptistr]

Interesting topic! If Weihua is right about the CPJ data, perhaps the data by Reporters Without Borders could also be useful to you.

In the first graph, it's not very clear to me to what period of time the death count is for. Is it the total death count of last decade, of last year? Maybe it would help to clear that up in the graph. Perhaps it would also be helpful to have a graph to clear up what you mean by "journalist deaths". Are the journalists being murdered? Are they collateral deaths of a war?

I think the chart regarding years would work better as a line chart, so you can get rid of the bars and maybe explain some of the peaks.

I'm not sure the comparison with police deaths works very well. Perhaps you could compare to total deaths of the particular conflict happening in the country (eg. the war in Syria or the war against drugs in Mexico), just to know how much that conflict affects journalism.

Good job so far, looking forward to the rest!

[sarahslo]

what do the colors mean in the deaths by year? nothing, yes? color should be used to denote meaning and guide the reader's eye, to make connections and to point to differences.

i also don't think it's apt to compare journalists deaths and police deaths. police deaths in the US vs journalists around the world? if nothing else, they are on different scale so they are not comparable visually.

i'd rotate the deaths charts so the years are on the bottom and we can see the trend better.