WAN said in a report issued on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in South Africa that journalists were killed both outside and inside conflict zones.
WAN said that press freedom is being suppressed in as diverse places as Belarus, Egypt, Zimbabwe, China, and Vietnam.
The WAN report said death threats "continue to reach investigative reporters, whether they work in Haiti or Croatia."
Meanwhile, some 59 journalists have been killed since November 2006, 26 of them in Iraq.