Russian soldiers occupying regions of Ukraine are spending time gathering information, making lists and searching for journalists in order to make them collaborate or to silence them.

“By waging this manhunt to track down Ukrainian journalists, the Russian troops aim to terrorize them and force them to remain silent if they refuse to disseminate Kremlin propaganda,” said Jeanne Cavelier, of Reporters without Borders.

Journalists in that European region have been warned to either spread only information approved by Russian leaders — that is, misinformation — or face consequences.

Since March 1, seven journalists have died doing their jobs in Ukraine.

Journalists around the world risk and sacrifice their lives more often than most of us know.

They go fearlessly into war zones like Ukraine, they report stories about evil forces in government, and they routinely tell stories that someone out there doesn’t want to be told.

Only on rare occasions do we hear of American reporters dying on domestic soil, but that’s not to say it doesn’t happen, nor that journalists don’t put themselves in harm’s way every single day.

That could come from simply knocking on the door of a home where a fatal shooting might have occurred in an attempt to give residents there a fair chance to tell their side of a story. Or it could mean threats of bodily harm resulting from some great in-depth investigation uncovering crime and corruption.

Those types of threats sometimes do happen in “real life” — not just in crime novels or fictional motion pictures.

Undoubtedly, though, the most serious risk to journalists working hard to share information comes in other corners of the world.

The far-away lands where these injustices occur sometimes are easy to ignore or forget, but the foreign soil doesn’t make the work of these reporters, photographers or videographers any less important.

In an attempt to recognize the ultimate sacrifices journalists have made last year, journalists around the globe this week will mark World Press Freedom Day.

Locally, the names will be recited for 82 international journalists whose lives were snuffed out prematurely in pursuit of a story.

I suspect all of those journalists feared the situation in which they were immersed. Undeniably, each probably knew that death could be imminent. Likewise, each could have walked away, returned home to their families and turned their backs on the people counting on their first-hand accounts and other critically important information.

My friend and former colleague Glenn Luther knows well the dangers that come with doing this job in unfriendly territories.

Luther, a Howland native, spent time in Afghanistan in 2003 helping to train Afghans on how to report news accurately as it unfolded in the war-torn nation. He taught them how they could effect change through their pens and the lens of their cameras.

For many years those Afghan journalists put their lives on the line to share the news and images of a world most of us would never visit.

After American troops withdrew last year, I watched as Luther struggled frantically seeking ways to help remove those journalists from Afghanistan, now being targeted by the Taliban and other Islamic extremists for reprisals and death.

Since Jan. 1, 2021, seven journalists have died in Afghanistan.

On Tuesday, I’ll be among members of the Youngstown Press Club who will gather at noon on the steps of SS. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Youngstown to recite names of all 82 journalists who died doing their jobs since January 2021. That will be followed by a time of prayer and reflection inside the church.

Every act of journalism — every attempt to uncover and report the truth that someone else seeks to hide — takes courage. Journalists seeking the truth have been injured, imprisoned, abused or killed. In addition to the 82 journalists we also will recognize some 362 journalists who are imprisoned around the world, along with 93 citizen journalists and 20 media assistants.

These people pay a severe price for doing their jobs and trying to relate an important story. Can you imagine dying just to tell a story?

blinert@tribtoday.com