UNITED NATIONS - FEAR through systematic violence threatens press freedom around the world, but the number of journalists killed dropped sharply to 41 last year, according to a report released on Tuesday.

'Attacks on the Press,' a report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, found that 41 journalists were killed in direct connection to their work last year, a drop from 65 in 2007 largely attributable to improved security in Iraq.

The survey also highlighted a modest decline in the number of journalists under detention from 127 in 2007 to 125 last year.

'Today, the greatest threats to freedom of the press are more insidious than a generation ago because they are intended to induce a climate of fear and self-censorship through systematic violence and emblematic arrest aimed at those who would practice real, independent journalism,' said author Carl Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter, in the preface of this year's survey.

The report found that murders, kidnappings and assaults were fueling widespread self-censorship in Latin America, with powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, gangsters in Brazilian slums, paramilitary groups in Colombia and violent street gangs in El Salvador and Guatemala terrorizing the press.

It said Vietnam, military-ruled Myanmar and even ostensibly democratic Thailand were following China's censorship model, with governments controlling the Internet and punishing those who circumvent the restrictions.

The survey said text messaging had become a major tool for African reporters but noted that the same technology was being used to threaten journalists and undermine the profession.

It also noted that Arab governments, concerned about satellite television coverage of civil strife and economic hardship, were trying to reassert control over the medium.

CPJ executive director Joel Simon said meanwhile the US 'war on terror had a devastating effect' on the press, with record numbers of journalists murdered over the past seven years and a surge in detentions worldwide.

The survey urged US President Barack Obama to 'recognise that whenever the United States fails to uphold press freedom at home or on the battlefield, its actions ripple around the world'.

'By scrupulously upholding press freedom at home, by ending the practice of open-ended detentions of journalists, and by investigating and learning from each instance in which the US military is responsible for the death of a journalist, Obama can send an unequivocal message about the country's commitment to protecting press freedom,' it said. -AFP