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.
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)
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)