I read it, and no, it doesn't. It says it does: The preface says that they have "a great deal of confidence that the death, detention, abduction, or disappearance of each journalist was a direct result of their journalistic work." But they include obvious counterexamples.
For example, "nearly all" the journalists killed in Syria, they say, were killed "in airstrikes and artillery bombardments." No one uses artillery to kill a journalist. You could argue they wouldn't have been in range had they not been journalists,
but this would only apply to journalists who were originally living in a peaceful place and specifically went to areas under bombardment to cover the story. They don't specify this. They note on p. 12
that "75 journalists were killed in their country of origin and five were killed while on a reporting assignment to another country. So while they don't specify, these were almost certainly Syrian, not foreign journalists.
A massive number of non-journalists have perished in airstrikes and artillery bombardments in Syria.
There's a lot of carelessness. On p. 10 they write, "The world’s five deadliest countries for journalists include three–India, Mexico, and for
the first time the United States,"
There's a lot of carelessness. On p. 10 they write, "The world’s five deadliest countries for journalists include three–India, Mexico, and for
the first time the United States,"
even though by their own methodology, they conclude the US is no. 6, on p. 8. It looks to me as if their numbers for "detained journalists" in Turkey is off by somewhere between 50% and an order of magnitude: CPJ has it at 68, cpj.org/reports/2018/1…, and I know they chronically
under-report; some groups have it closer to 300. I'd always suspect the higher figure, from what I've seen.
