A total of 97 journalists died in 30 countries in 2010, with about two journalist killed each week, the International News Safety Institute (INSI) report said on Wednesday.
A total of 85 journalists were murdered, with most of them killed while working in their home countries on criminal and corruption stories.
"While we welcome a fall in fatalities overall, the sustained underlying level of casualties remains unacceptably high," ISNI's Director Rodney Pinder said. "It is a terrible price to pay for our news."
Pakistan was ranked "the most murderous" country in 2010 as 16 journalists were killed in violent surges that spread into the new year, while Mexico and Honduras, with 10 deaths each, were called the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere, the report said.
The 2010 list was continued with Iraq, six dead, and the Philippines and India, five each.
Although, the total number declined from 133 in 2009, the figure still remains high, Pinder said. The report said that in that same year "32 [representatives of] news media were killed in one incident in the Philippines, the worst single act of bloodshed ever suffered by the news industry."
There have been scores of unsolved killings of reporters in Russia in recent years, including most infamously that of Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce Kremlin critic, who was shot dead in her apartment block on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's birthday four years ago.
Khimki Pravda editor-in-chief Mikhail Beketov was severely beaten in November 2008 for his writing on sensitive social issues, including plans to build a road from Moscow to St. Petersburg through the centuries-old Khimki Forest. In his articles, Beketov wrote against the road construction.
Another Russian journalist, Oleg Kashin, was brutally attacked on November 6. Kashin, who works for the respected Kommersant daily, suffered severe head and leg injuries. It is widely assumed that Kashin was also targeted in revenge for his writing against the road construction through the Khimki Forest.
The attack on Kashin made the headlines in Russia for days. President Dmitry Medvedev has vowed that whoever was behind the attack "will be punished regardless of their position, place in society or accomplishments."
MOSCOW, January 12 (RIA Novosti)
