Datawatch: killings of journalists at four-year high as Ukraine war takes toll

Datawatch showcases statistical insights that have grabbed the attention of our data journalists — anywhere and on any topic.

At least 67 journalists and media support workers were killed around the world last year, the highest number since 2018 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The war in Ukraine was a big factor: 15 journalists were killed in the country, the highest number among the nations tracked by the committee.

Mexico recorded almost as many killings as Ukraine: 13, the highest number for a single year in the Latin American nation, highlighting the dangers involved in reporting on topics such as corruption and gang violence.

In Haiti, which recorded the third largest number of killings last year, journalists covering gang violence and civil unrest after the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse in 2021 “have faced an alarming upsurge in violent attacks”, the committee said.

Between 2000 and 2021, a total of 1,689 journalists and media support workers were killed globally. The largest number of killings — 282 — were in Iraq. Syria, the Philippines and Mexico also recorded many deaths.

Shotaro Tani

Our other charts of the week . . . 

The global art market last year returned to pre-pandemic price levels and some of the biggest increases were recorded by contemporary artworks created by women, according to research by Artsy, an online marketplace for art.

The median price for an existing work by a female artist increased 663 per cent, from $48,000 for art sold between 2019 and 2021 to $738,000 in 2022. Work by male artists experienced a median price increase of 332 per cent from $17,000 to $323,000.

Anna Weyant’s “Falling Women” sold for $1.6mn, up from its previous sale price of $37,800 in 2021.

The largest price increase was logged by Rachel Jones’ “Splice Structure (7)” which sold for $1.2mn, up 6,157 per cent from its previous sale price of $19,000 in 2021.

Justine Williams

The number of fatalities per 100mn miles travelled in the US was 1.46 in 2020, down from 1.58 two decades ago.

Although this is significantly less than it has been throughout the past century, fatalities were up year on year to their highest level since 2007.

In 1923, the first year in the data set collated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the rate was more than 21.

However, the opposite is true in low-income countries according to separate data from the World Bank. The mortality caused by road traffic injuries per 100,000 people has increased over the past decade from 27 to 28.

Dan Clark

Almost one in five teenagers in the US say they use YouTube “almost constantly” and three-quarters use it daily according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

TikTok is also popular with just under half saying they use it at least several times a day.

A much smaller share use Facebook and more than two-thirds of teens said they never used it. This is a shift from 2015 when Facebook was the most used; at the time, 71 per cent said they used the platform on a regular basis.

Dan Clark

The number of people living in extreme poverty rose sharply in 2020, according to World Bank projections — the first increase since 1998.

Globally, people in extreme poverty — defined as an income below $2.15 a day in 2017 prices — rose 11 per cent to 719mn, the Bank estimated.

The rise was due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, as disruption to economic activity slowed growth around the globe.

Before that, the number of people living in extreme poverty had fallen from 1.86bn in 1998 to 648mn in 2019.

Until the pandemic struck, the long decline had been forecast to continue. Yet despite this, the world was not on course to achieve the World Bank’s goal of a global poverty rate of 3 per cent by 2030.

The effect of the pandemic, as well as food price inflation due to the war in Ukraine, mean the extreme poverty rate will be 6.8 per cent by 2030, equivalent to 574mn people, the bank forecasts.

Oliver Hawkins

---

Welcome to Datawatch — regular readers of the print edition of the Financial Times might recognise it from its weekday home on the front page.

Do you have thoughts on any of the charts featured this week — or any other data that has caught your eye in the past seven days? Let us know in the comments

Keep up to date with the latest visual and data journalism from the Financial Times:

• Data Points. The weekly column from the FT’s chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch

• Climate Graphic of the Week is published every week on our Climate Capital hub page.

• Sign up to The Climate Graphic: Explained newsletter, free for FT subscribers. Sent out every Sunday, a behind the scenes look at the most topical climate data of the week from our specialist climate reporting and data visualisation team.

• Follow the Financial Times on Instagram for charts and visuals from key stories

• Follow FT Data on Twitter for news graphics and data-driven stories from across the Financial Times