Today Reporters Without Borders is releasing a thematic report on what is now the single biggest threat to media freedom – organized crime. Worldwide, a total of 141 journalists were killed during the decade of the 2000s for daring to denounce the influence of criminal gangs and their parallel economy. In this regard Philippines and Mexico are the deadliest countries. In Mexico, the ferocity of the cartels largely accounts for the horrific total of 69 journalists killed since 2000 and 11 others who have gone missing since 2003. In the Philippines, organized crime has had a direct or indirect role in most of the 142 murders of media personnel since the fall of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Since the end of the Cold War, the media’s leading predators have been mafias, drug cartels and paramilitary groups that have turned to large-scale smuggling. Mafias of the traditional Costa Nostra kind are no longer the only form that this transnational phenomenon takes, one that is deadlier for journalists than the world’s remaining oppressive regimes and dictatorships. No continent is spared. Financial networks, money-laundering, legal fronts and tax paradises constitute an invisible but ubiquitous parallel world that will not be brought down by the arrest of any godfather or drug lord. Organized crime not only poses a physical danger to journalists, it also defies the media’s investigative ability. It is clear from this report that the media are not united against organized crime, their correspondents are isolated and lack resources, and their capacity for investigative reporting is eclipsed by the race for breaking news.