Murdering journalists who will not bow to intimidation by the authorities they annoy or by criminals they condemn and seek to expose is disturbingly a still rising trend worldwide. This continued shooting of the messenger, rather than addressing the awkward message, may, however, be becoming less effective, as the Internet and the mobile telephone with the camera and e-mail mean that just about anyone can broadcast news — witness the remarkable pictures of this week’s Hudson River airliner crash landing.

But there are still times when the message can get through without recourse to technology. At the start of this month, the staunchly independent editor of Sri Lanka’s “Sunday Leader” newspaper, Lasantha Wickrematunge was shot dead in a Colombo street. This was by no means the first murder of a Sri Lankan journalist who had challenged his government, generally over the treatment of the Tamil minority.

Wickrematunge had warned his brother that he thought his life was in danger and gave him instructions were he to be killed. Immediately after the slaying, the brother went, as he had been told, to Wickrematunge’s house and recovered a file of sensitive papers. These included an extraordinary farewell from this brave journalist, explaining why he believed that government agents would assassinate him and why he believed as in the past, despite presidential promises of a full and exhaustive enquiry into the crime, no one would ever be brought to book. But in the most telling passage in this remarkable document, Wickrematunge explained why his death would not in the end stop up the mouths of other journalists and how though he died, the uncomfortable truths the Sri Lankan government did not want published, would not also die with him. Wickrematunge’s headline for his own obituary was “And then they came for me”. For the last three weeks, the Israelis have also been attempting to cover up their genocidal butchery in Gaza by keeping the international press out of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Middle East. A few local journalists continued to work and file copy and Ramattan News Agency has provided the main source of film footage of Israeli savagery. On Thursday, an English journalist from the BBC managed to cross from Egypt to Rafah. But there are disturbing rumors that the Israelis, very probably with help from US satellites, have been seeking to pinpoint the location of journalists when they are sending out their stories from ordinary mobile or satellite phones. They then target them with artillery or airstrikes. If they managed “accidentally” to kill a journalist, they could use the murder to justify keeping the world’s media out of Gaza while they pulverize it.

In Russia, with still fresh memories of tight Soviet press control, journalists have been muzzled successfully for now, thanks to a series of murders of which both the Kremlin and the Russian Mafia are strongly suspected. But such tactics are doomed to failure. Brave journalists may pay with their lives, but the truths they seek to publish cannot be assassinated, not in Sri Lanka, not in Russia and certainly not in Gaza.