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Reporters Without Borders: 2026 Lowest Point For Press Freedom

Above photo: East Asia Forum.

More than 52 percent of countries are now classified as ‘difficult’ or worse for press freedom.

Compared to only 13.7 percent in 2002.

In its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports that global press freedom has reached its lowest level in the index’s 25-year history, with more than half of the world’s countries now classified as “difficult” or “very serious” for journalistic freedom.

“Journalists are still being killed and imprisoned for their work, but the tactics undermining press freedom are evolving. Journalism is being asphyxiated by hostile political discourse towards reporters, weakened by a faltering media economy, and squeezed by laws being used as weapons against the press,” the RSF report read.

For the first time since RSF began tracking press freedom, 52.2 percent of countries fall into those bottom two categories, marking a dramatic decline in press freedom conditions from 2002, when the figure stood at just 13.7 percent. 

Less than one percent of the global population now lives in a country where press freedom is rated “good,” down from 20 percent in 2002.

Of the five indicators RSF uses to measure press freedom – covering economic, legal, security, political, and social environments – the legal indicator dropped the sharpest this year.

RSF tied the slide to the increasing weaponization of law against reporters globally. 

In West Asia, Saudi Arabia tumbled 14 places after a year that RSF tied to state violence against journalists, among them the execution of Turki al-Jasser. 

Press freedom across the Gulf has come under increasing suppression, with authorities tightening control over information, expanding arrests, and using broad security laws to criminalize dissent and restrict independent reporting.

Palestine sat at 156th, with RSF pointing to the more than 220 journalists killed in Gaza alone by Israeli forces since the October 2023 genocidal war was launched.

In December last year, RSF declared Israel the world’s worst enemy of journalists, finding that Israeli forces were responsible for 43 percent of all journalist deaths globally between December 2024 and December 2025 – nearly half the year’s total toll of 67. 

The organization said those killed were not collateral casualties, with RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire stating plainly that they “were killed, targeted for their work.”

Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham further revealed that military intelligence had established a dedicated unit tasked with finding pretrial justifications to label Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives before killing them, sometimes targeting their residences with their families inside.

Since the start of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, RSF counts at least 300 journalists killed by Israeli forces on all its fronts,  making Israel the deadliest country for reporters for three consecutive years. 

In the most recent Israeli assault on Lebanon, Israeli forces deliberately killed at least five journalists in under a month, including three in a single strike on a clearly marked press vehicle in southern Lebanon in late March.

In the US, RSF said US President Donald Trump has turned “repeated attacks on the press and journalists into a systematic policy,” dropping the country to 64th place in its global press freedom ranking. 

Despite the report ranking EU countries as generally high in press freedom, a pattern of cases across the continent tells a more complicated story.

Coverage of the genocide in Gaza, in particular, has increasingly become grounds for arrest, deportation, and terrorism charges against journalists.

British journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested at Heathrow in August 2024 under the Terrorism Act and subsequently faced a home raid and residency threats from Austrian intelligence in February 2025, due to his reporting on Gaza.

Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah was detained for three days and deported in handcuffs by Swiss authorities in January 2025 to prevent a speaking engagement, an action that was later condemned by UN experts and eventually ruled unjustified by the Swiss government.

Since 2023 in particular, a number of Western European countries, including the UK, France, and Germany, have systematically arrested, deported, and charged journalists and commentators covering Palestine under counterterrorism and immigration laws.

Press freedom and human rights organizations have described it as a coordinated effort to silence reporting on the war in Gaza and criminalize solidarity with Palestinians. 

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