The social and political functioning of states and the homicide of media workers

In this issue Riddick et al1 find important relationships between the homicide of media workers and several nation-level indices of human development and social and political functioning (see page 682). They combed through five international databases to identify homicides among media workers, and examined seven indices that capture the level of social and economic development (one index), political terror (one index), corruption (one index), and various indicators of the failure of state rule (four indices). Importantly, all of the indices except for the scale for social and economic development are associated with the homicide of media workers in at least one of the multivariate models.

Riddick et al took two important steps that bolstered the credibility of their findings. First, they relied on five independent and internationally recognised databases to identify homicides of media workers. Their criteria required that a death should appear in two or more data sources to be included in the analyses. The deaths of over 200 media workers were excluded because they did not meet Riddick et …