Reporters Without Borders is out with its annual list of most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, and for the first time, the U.S. is named.

NBC News:

At least 63 professional journalists were killed doing their jobs in 2018, a 15 percent increase over last year, said the group, Reporters Without Borders.  The number of deaths rises to 80 when all media workers and people classified as citizen journalists are included, it said in its annual report.

The world's five deadliest countries for journalists include three – India, Mexico and, for the first time, the United States – where journalists were killed in cold blood, even though those countries weren't at war or in conflict, the group said.

"The hatred of journalists that is voiced ... by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists," Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

Is it really more dangerous for a journalist to work in the U.S. than almost anywhere else?  Apparently, one nutcase who shot up a newsroom in Annapolis earlier this year gave Reporters Without Borders an excuse to embarrass the U.S.:

Reporters Without Borders said the three most dangerous countries for journalists to work in were Afghanistan, Syria and Mexico.

Meanwhile, the shooting deaths of five employees of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, in June propelled the United States into the ranks of the most dangerous countries for the first time.

Let's be clear here.  The organization is equating Mexican drug lords murdering journalists because they don't like what's being written about them with a mentally disturbed individual killing employees of a newspaper in the U.S.?

Reporters Without Borders said 348 journalists were being detained worldwide, compared with 326 at this time in 2017.  China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold more than half of the world's imprisoned journalists, it said.

No U.S. reporters are in jail because they offended or angered someone in power.  And yet it's "dangerous" to work as a reporter in the United States?

This is positively balmy.  If Reporters Without Borders wants to highlight the dangers to journalists in war zones and oppressive societies, that's fine.  That's their job.  But they included the U.S. for political reasons, not based on journalists having their lives or freedom threatened.

Those reasons no doubt include Donald Trump's inelegant criticism of the media.  Let's forget for a moment that Antifa and other violent left-wing extremists routinely threaten the safety of journalists when covering their protests.  What Reporters Without Borders and the U.S. media are complaining about is that Trump thinks they're biased and out to get him.

How dare he criticize those engaged in the holy calling of journalism?  We forget that reporters are high priests, that they write only the truth as it is revealed to them by...whomever. 

So Trump rails against CNN in the harshest language, and crowds boo them when they show up at a Trump rally.  This hurts their feelings, and, besides, it's a sacrilege against the media.

The fact that 99.9% of U.S. journalists work and live under no threat whatsoever apparently didn't matter to the politicized mandarins of Reporters Without Borders.