The roadside daylight slaughter in Maguindanao province in November were so horrific that the report publishers gave the incident a special entry in the report.

The tragedy ensured that last year with 70 deaths worldwide was the worst for journalists since records were first kept 30 years ago, said the Committee to Protect Journalists, the New York publishers of "Attacks on the Press 2009."

The previous record was 67 set in 2007.

Also, the 2009 report lists 25 journalists whose deaths they cannot confirm as having happened while they were on duty, even though their deaths might have been suspicious.

Apart from the Philippines massacre deaths, two other journalists were killed in that country in 2009 making it the deadliest place for reporters. The next deadliest country was Somalia with nine deaths, followed by Iraq and Pakistan, both with four, three in Russia and then two each in Mexico, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Twelve other countries, including Israel, each had one death last year.

CPJ's report comes down hard on the government of the Philippines, describing in the special Philippines section, "Makings of a massacre: Impunity fostered Philippine killings," how the government and police play down dangers to journalists.

According to a description in the special section, some reporters sent text messages to family just before the massacre saying they believed there could be trouble. But the scale of the slaughter, 57 dead including journalists, shocked even those familiar with the dangers and tragedies of Filipino politics.

The journalists were accompanying a convoy of people who intended to file candidacy papers for political clan leader Esmael Mangudadatu's bid for governor of Maguindanao province. But at a makeshift roadblock, they were ambushed allegedly led by another clan leader and potential political opponent. The victims were indiscriminately shot and hacked to death and dumped along with their vehicles in a huge pit to be buried, witnesses said.

Around 200 people have been charged with murder in the incident.

While the scale of the attack was unprecedented, "it was not entirely unpredictable in the often lawless context of Philippine politics," the report noted. "Before the massacre, CPJ had undertaken two missions to the country in 2009 to express its deep concerns and conduct research into the culture of impunity in media killings."

CPJ ranked the Philippines sixth on its annual Impunity Index, which measures unsolved journalist killings as a percentage of total population.

"Even before the massacre, the Philippines' impunity ranking was the highest in the world for a peacetime democracy, behind only war-ridden Iraq, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Colombia."

CPJ also predicted in its report that more journalists will die in the Philippines, where three have been killed this year and 65 have been killed in the past 20 years. Only Iraq has had more such deaths in the same period.

As well, only five people in the Philippines have been convicted of killing journalists in those 20 years.

But authorities in the Philippines have "consistently played down the gravity of the impunity problem," CPJ said. Early last year a presidential spokesman said that CPJ findings were an "exaggeration."

CPJ said that "his deflection was indicative of an official stance that has allowed wayward local government officials, so frequently involved in media killings in the Philippines, to perpetrate crimes without fear of punishment -- even, apparently, the premeditated mass murder of 31 media workers."

In the preface to the report, Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, noted the new development, originating in Iran, of "media espionage" that was leveled against Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari.

After spending 118 days in solitary confinement in Tehran's Evin prison beginning just after the country's disputed elections last June, the Revolutionary Guards failed to find evidence of Bahari being a Western spy, so they accused him of sending reports to Western countries that were enemies of Iran. The effect, Bahari said, was to criminalize journalism itself.

He was lucky, said Zakaria. Bahari had the resources of Newsweek and The Washington Post to help him get released.

Unfortunately, a trend in media coverage is making a journalist's work more dangerous worldwide, CPJ noted. An increasing number of foreign bureaus, newspapers and magazines that are starved of resources are relying more heavily on local freelancers.

"These stringers look just as suspicious to dictators and militant groups and they are distinctly more vulnerable," CPJ said. With no media organization behind them, their cases receive scant attention.

"Nine freelancers were killed in reprisal for their work in 2009, while 60 others were in prisons worldwide. As publications and TV networks continue to shed staff and look for ways to cover conflicts more affordably, the number of such cases is only going to grow."

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