However the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) offered a conflicting number, saying 47 reporters were killed in their line of work last year.
Reporters Without Borders said five media assistants were also killed.
In 1995, 64 journalists were killed, 22 of them in Algeria.
The average number of deaths in the past decade is around 34, according to CPJ.
Most of 2005's toll occurred in Iraq, with 24 journalists and five media assistants killed there, mostly by terrorist strikes and Iraqi guerrilla attacks, said RWB.
However three were killed by the US army.
Iraqi television producer Wael al-Bakri, 30, was shot dead by US troops on 28 June, and while a US military spokesman admitted the following day that there was an inquiry into American involvement in his death, no result has been announced.
"Too many journalists have lost their lives just because they were doing their jobs, and unresponsive governments bear responsibility for the toll," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said.
"The war in Iraq might lead one to think that reporters are losing their lives on the battlefield," she said.
"But the fact is that three out of four journalists killed around the world are singled out for murder, and their killers are rarely brought to justice."
Murder accounted for almost three-quarters of the deaths documented in Iraq, where a number of journalists were kidnapped and killed there, compared with just one fatal abduction the previous year.
Iraqi journalists bore the brunt of attacks, with American freelancer Steven Vincent the only foreign reporter killed there in 2005, compared with five foreigners the previous year.
The Philippines also registered around four journalist deaths, and RWB said their enemies are more likely now to be politicians, businessmen and drug-traffickers keen to silence reporters who expose their crimes rather than armed gangs.
Two leading journalists in Lebanon were killed this year: newspaper columnist Samir Kassir in June, and publisher Gebran Tueni.
May Chidiac, a well-known Lebanese television presenter lost a hand and a leg in a bomb attack on her car in September.
In Africa, reporters were murdered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Somalia, and their murderers have not been punished.
More than 1,300 physical attacks and threats were recorded by Reporters Without Borders during the year, more than in 2004.
Reporters Without Borders said these have occurred almost daily in Bangladesh and even Nepal, which formerly enjoyed a relatively free and unrestricted media.
About 50 journalists were beaten up by police, soldiers or henchmen of local politicians in Nigeria and Peru.
Journalists reporting on election demonstrations in Egypt and Azerbaijan were also targeted.
Journalists jailed
Prisons also remain full of journalists, according to RWB, mostly in China where 32 reporters are behind bars.
This is followed by 24 jailed in Cuba, 17 in Ethiopia, 13 in Eritrea and five in Burma.
China has also jailed 62 cyber-dissidents as part of its ongoing attempts to filter the internet.