Why not have the baseline to be zero deaths, then if you prefer you can add more dimensions like journalists arrested etc, then we can create a metric and maybe you can find one where you can rank China and Russia over US but you still have US rank over the countries with no kills and no arrests.

Your point seems to be a "what about" China/Russia or other extreme country.

I think you're missing my point. NBC's headline is deceptive: there is no "most dangerous countries" list in the cited report. Furthermore, using the word dangerous is far more subjective than "deadly", which is made evident by the fact that we seem to disagree on what constitutes a dangerous country. My comparisons to other countries is trying to make the point that you can be a country with zero everything and still be more "dangerous" than a country that experienced a mass shooting and a hurricane. This is why I object to NBC News conflating the two words and suggesting that the US is more dangerous than it is.

Also, how realistic is a baseline of zero deaths?

>Least likely to die on the job were people in sales, with fewer than 2 deaths per 100,000, and management, with about 2 ½.[0]

Those two salesmen probably weren't murdered, they probably fell down the stairs in the office or were hit by a car crossing the street. This could have happened to a journalist or two this year as well in addition to what's in this report. But while zero deaths is a noble goal, I don't think it's a useful baseline for the profession of journalism. No job has zero hazards.

[0]: http://www.safebee.com/health/most-and-least-dangerous-jobs-...

You still ignore the countries where 0 journalists were killed by an angry person because of that they wrote or represent.

I agree US is not as dangerous as China,Russia etc but is more dangerous then the rest of the countries, you want to draw a base line somewhere above US "danger" level ,(again keep in mind this is a global comparison of journalists that died at work not random accidents)

I'm not ignoring it. 0 journalists were killed in Russia this year (at least not in a way that made this list).

Does one incident resulting in 4 deaths constitute a trend? how many journos were killed in the US in years past? What about other countries that were at zero this year? This year's report shows a zero for France, but as another commenter reminded me, Charlie Hebdo had 12 people killed (7-8 could be called "journalists" if you count copy editors and cartoonists) just under 4 years ago. What did that shooting say about the danger of being a journalist in France, and did that constitute a trend? Which country is more dangerous - France or the US?

It's a value judgment. This is my point.

But if 4 journalists were killed in other country would you made same point? I agree "dangerous" is not well defined here , still is a correct fact that US was on top and that compared to other civilized countries in US you can have 1 journalists upsetting 1 person and that causing all persons in the journal building got killed, this could include journalists that did not wrote any "controversial" articles.

So we can debate the meaning of dangerous or if we need 1% of jorunalists to be killed before you consider it a dangerous job but IMO the fact that as a journalists I and my colleagues could get killed with heavy guns because some person is upset is dangerous/risky compared to other countries (maybe compared to US is more dangerous to be a student)

"Trend" is also a word that doesn't appear in TFA.

North Korea had zero journalists killed.