Somalia's war on journalism

Exploring the media landscape in a country where going to work has become a life-and-death decision for reporters.    2012 has been a big year for Somali media – after years of covering civil war, rising insurgency and a battle for resources, Somali journalists reported on the country’s first election in decades. But there is another reason 2012 has been significant: 13 journalists have been killed in the country this year. A suicide bomb attack in Mogadishu on September 20 killed three reporters. Hours later, unidentified gunmen shot dead veteran journalist Hassan Yusuf Absuge for covering the explosion. Al-Shabaab, the armed group operating in Somalia, has claimed responsibility for a number of the killings this year, but they are by no means the only threat. There are no official regulations on what you can or cannot report but journalists trying to cover stories that criticise Al-Shabab, government, big business or certain clans and their leaders, do so at their peril.