The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued its annual report this month.
At least 48 journalists were killed in relation to their work, compared with 72 in 2015, the group said in an annual report.
The group suggested that the final figures for 2016 could change, because it was still investigating the deaths of 27 journalists to determine if they were work-related.
“It is undeniably good news that fewer journalists are being murdered, and the decline shows the critical importance of the fight to end impunity,” Joel Simon, the executive director of the group, said in releasing the 2016 report.
This year just one journalist critical of Russia was murdered. Pavel Sheremet, who wrote for the independent news website Ukrainska Pravda, was killed in Kiev on July 20, 2016 by a car bomb. Sheremet told Reuters in 2015 that he didn't feel safe returning to Moscow, where he began his career. "I'm threatened often and given hints. Every time I go to Moscow, it's like I'm in a minefield."
Now that Vladimir Putin is going to have his stooge Donald Trump in the White House, it's a good time to revisit Putin's relationship with the fourth estate. There's no question Trump idolizes the man, so in case he wants to start emulating him, forewarned is forearmed. According to international watchdog Freedom House, Russia ranks 180 out of 199 countries for press freedom, behind Iraq, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Since 2000 when Putin gained power, 34 journalists have been murdered in Russia, using combined data from the CPJ and the Glasnost Defense Foundation. These are deaths confirmed or likely to be work-related homicides committed in Russia.
Most of the suspected perpetrators are military officials, government officials, or political groups. How many Putin is responsible for directing is unknown. But he doesn't have to be directly involved, says Nina Ognianova, the coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia program. They are "slain with impunity in Putin’s Russia. […] Their killers are emboldened to act by an administration that marginalizes them, isolates them, and downplays their role in society."
Harley Balzer, a Russian and East European studies professor at Georgetown University, says that the orders don't even have to come directly from Putin do be his wishes: "We know from Karen Dawisha's book (Putin’s Kleptocracy) that as deputy mayor in St. Petersburg, he never asked for a bribe. He did not need to do this. […] He controlled a mayor's contingency fund that received 25 percent of the funds in every contract the city signed—no fingerprints."
Journalists lives are cheap in Putin's world. Particularly if those journalists are critical of him.