30 journalists killed by organised crime says watchdog

Journalists are increasingly becoming easy targets for organised crime, with more than 30 killed worldwide over the last two years, a media watchdog warned Thursday.

"The Mob has spread its tentacles around the globe faster than all the multinationals combined," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a new report on the dangers.

"From Beijing to Moscow, from Tijuana to Bogota, from Malta to Slovakia, investigative journalists who shed light on the deals that involve organised crime unleash the wrath of gangsters, whose common feature is an aversion to any publicity unless they control it," said its author, French investigative journalist Frederic Ploquin.

He said the only way to counter the threat was for reporters to work together to protect each other.

The biggest danger was in investigating corruption, Ploquin said, now that ruthless crime groups have "established a kind of pact with the state" in many countries, "to the point that you cannot tell where one stops and the other begins."