Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney accused world leaders Wednesday of failing to protect journalists and faulted their "a collective shrug" over the slaying of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
Clooney, the British government's envoy on media freedom, said at a conference on press freedom that "journalists are under attack like never before," not just while covering wars but for exposing crime and corruption.
"The vast majority of these murders go unpunished," she said, adding that "world leaders responded with little more than a collective shrug" to Khashoggi's killing by agents close to the Saudi crown prince.
The Washington Post columnist was killed inside Saudi Arabia's Consulate in Istanbul last year.
According to the United Nations cultural body UNESCO, 99 media workers were killed worldwide in 2018.
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Clooney also took aim at US President Donald Trump. She said "the country of James Madison" one of America's founding fathers and a champion of a free press "has a leader today who vilifies the media."
The London conference where she spoke was initiated by UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. Politicians, officials, activists and journalists from more than 100 countries were taking part in the two-day meeting, but two Russian news outlets were banned.
The British government said Russian news agency Sputnik and state-owned TV network RT were excluded because of their alleged "active role in spreading disinformation."
RT was censured last year by Britain's broadcast regulator for breaking UK impartiality rules in its coverage of the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in England.
RT, formerly known as Russia Today, said "it takes a particular brand of hypocrisy to advocate for freedom of press while banning inconvenient voices and slandering alternative media." Organisers did not release a full list of conference participants but said delegations were expected from nations with dire press freedom records, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
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