The previous yr was one other bleak one for journalists, with dozens killed and tons of extra behind bars world wide, in response to media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In its annual round-up for 2025, RSF says that 67 reporters had been killed, 503 detained, 135 lacking, and 20 held hostage as of December 1.
As in earlier years, Russia was thought-about one of many worst locations for journalists, rating solely behind China within the variety of reporters it has incarcerated, with 48 journalists in detention. Belarus and Iran additionally stay among the many world’s prime jailers, with 33 and 21 journalists imprisoned respectively, inserting each inside RSF’s international prime 10.
Russia, nevertheless, stands out not just for its numbers however for the growing severity of its stress on the press.
Many reporters there have been imprisoned on controversial prices starting from extremism to allegedly spreading false details about the continued invasion of Ukraine.
For instance, in what RSF described as a “sham” course of and “the primary collective trial of journalists in Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin, Antonina Favorskaya, and Artyom Kriger had been every sentenced to 5 and a half years in jail in April for “collaborating with an extremist group” because of their protection of opposition chief Aleksei Navalny, who died in jail in February 2024.
The worsening media state of affairs in Russia has additionally pressured many journalists into exile, and almost 70 of them have been focused by arrests or convictions in absentia up to now three years – 30 of them in 2025 alone, RSF experiences.
‘Choked By Censorship’
Beyond Russia, Moscow has additionally contributed to Ukraine changing into one of many world’s deadliest nations for media staff, with RSF saying “the Russian military continues to focus on reporters” there, leading to fatalities from missile strikes, artillery fireplace, and occupation-related violence.
In October 2025, French photojournalist Antoni Lallican and Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Ivanchenko had been focused by Russian drones in jap Ukraine. Lallican was killed immediately, whereas Ivanchenko misplaced a leg. That identical month, reporters Alyona Hramova and Yevhen Karmazin had been killed in a Russian drone strike that injured their colleague Oleksandr Kolychev.
Elsewhere in RFE/RL’s protection space, the report outlines equally extreme pressures on impartial journalism.
RSF has documented the near-total dismantling of impartial media below Taliban rule in Afghanistan, with girls journalists being disproportionately focused. Since August 2021, greater than 165 media professionals have been arrested — together with 25 in 2025 — and the media monitor says “journalism has been choked by relentless censorship.”
The RSF report additionally highlights what number of governments have continued to weaponize courts, police, and safety providers in opposition to the press.
In one high-profile case in Georgia, journalist Mzia Amaglobeli confronted trial for supposedly resisting or utilizing violence in opposition to a regulation enforcement officer. She was ultimately sentenced to 2 years in jail in August, after what RSF referred to as “an unfair trial characterised by quite a few procedural irregularities.”
According to the media watchdog, Amaglobeli — who collectively received this yr’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought — is the primary lady journalist to be imprisoned in Georgia since independence because of “political motives,” which RSF described as “a symptom of the intense shift in direction of authoritarianism on this former Soviet republic within the Caucasus.”
In neighboring Azerbaijan, RSF highlighted the case of Sevinj Vagifgizi, the editor of the impartial media outlet Abzas Media, who was sentenced together with six of her colleagues to 9 years in jail after an “unfair and politically motivated trial based mostly on trumped-up prices of ‘smuggling overseas foreign money.’”
According to the report, 25 journalists are presently behind bars in Azerbaijan, 20 of them arrested since 1 December 2024.
‘Complete Impunity’
Meanwhile, within the Balkans, RSF mentioned 98 journalists had been bodily assaulted in Serbia whereas protecting widespread anti-corruption protests. It mentioned that round half of those assaults “had been carried out by the police with full impunity, in a local weather formed by President Aleksandar Vucic’s verbal assaults in opposition to the press.”
Despite the deteriorating media panorama typically, RSF additionally pointed to some optimistic developments, together with the discharge of 9 Belarusian journalists, amongst them RFE/RL’s Ihar Losik, in addition to Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khylyuk, who was free of Russian detention in August.
Overall although, these had been only a few brilliant spots in an in any other case grim state of affairs.
Outside RFE/RL’s protection area, RSF notes that China continues to be the world’s main jailer of journalists with 121 reporters in jail, whereas in Burma the army junta has intensified its repression of impartial media.
In the Middle East, Gaza as soon as once more ranked among the many world’s deadliest environments for the press, with journalists killed in air strikes, artillery fireplace, and cross-border assaults.
Taken collectively, the information underscores what RSF describes as a steadily worsening local weather through which journalists “have steadily turn into collateral victims, inconvenient observers, bargaining chips, pawns in diplomatic video games, women and men to be eradicated.”
