International Press Institute (IPI) Chief Johann Fritz called the annual report a `horror story', saying it showed that two thirds of the world's population live in countries where freedom of expression is not respected. Nearly half the journalists who died in 1998 were working in South America, including 10 in Colombia alone, five in Mexico and four in Brazil, according to the 200-page report on press freedom in 1998.

``While journalists in the Americas -- with the notably exception of Cuba were more independent than ever before, violent attacks on the media continued with impunity in 1998,'' it noted.

In Latin America ``violent attacks against journalists have increased with this new-found power, as corrupt officials, drug traffickers and organised criminals seek to prevent the media from exposingtheir activities.''IPI is a Vienna-based global network of media chiefs from over 100 countries, founded in 1950. Its board members include senior editors and publishers from around the world.

Turkey, meanwhile, topped the poll for jailed journalists, with 25 behind bars, while in a ray of good news, the IPI report noted that for the second year running not a single Algerian journalist was killed.

In Africa, where ``there are far more guns or landmines than telephones, radios and television sets,'' IPI experts lament that the media is often `politicized by the endemic cash shortage.' Journalists were killed last year in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Angola, Congo and Rwanda, it said, while noting that very few African countries such as South Africa `are succesfully transforming former state propaganda tools into public broadcasters.'

Asia fares little better. ``True freedom of expression is still only an aspiration for the majority of Asian countries; censorship remains prevalent,violence again st the media commonplace,'' said the report. ``Even in countries such as the Philippines or Macao, where the media remains among the freest in Asia, journalists often come under attack from local organised crime groups and drug syndicates,'' it lamented.

Afghanistan's fundamentalist Taliban regime and Myanmar's military junta were singled out as the fiercest opponents of press freedom, followed by Malaysia, whose premier Mahathir Mohamad has described westerners' notion of press freedom as `freedom to tell lies,' the report said.

In Russia, `obstacles facing the media are manifold', the report said, adding that `murder has shown itself to be the preferred method of censorship in at least five cases in Russia' in 1998.