When Mosul fell to Islamic State on June, 10, 2014, it sparked one of the biggest attacks on press freedom in recent times. Newspapers were shuttered, TV channels were ransacked, radio stations disappeared from the airwaves, and dozens of journalists vanished. Within days, the militants had a monopoly on information output.
Two years later, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program is still investigating what happened to many of those journalists who disappeared. During an investigative trip to Iraq in late 2015, CPJ found some had escaped and others went into hiding, changing their names and going underground. Others were kidnapped from their offices and homes, their fate to this day is hard to verify.
To mark the fall of Mosul, CPJ created an interactive map profiling the 27 journalists and media workers it has documented as being killed by Islamic State. The map has two layers: one showing a chronology of attacks on the press, the other showing profiles of the cases. To move between the narrative and chronology layers, click on the visible layers button on the top right.
The map includes cases from cities in Syria, Turkey, and France, but by far the greatest concentration of those murdered is in Mosul. Also included are 11 journalists listed as missing. Although they are feared dead, no bodies have been found, and they are therefore not classified by CPJ as killed. Dozens more journalists are missing in areas of Syria and Iraq that are controlled by Islamic State. They are likely held captive by the militants, but their fates are unknown.
