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[post_date] => 2025-10-15 18:39:37
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Once we lose a free press, we lose everything it protects.
Last summer, I stood in front of a typewriter that led to the death of two journalists. I was visiting the German Occupation Museum on the small Channel Island of Guernsey, a British crown dependency, and was awe-struck by a display on a group of dissident reporters from the 1940s.
At the time, all news entering the occupied Channel Islands was filtered by the Nazis, and reports from the BBC and elsewhere were forbidden. But a small group of journalists disobeyed Nazi orders, secretly listening to wireless broadcasts, and typing out uncensored news for distribution. One of them used the typewriter I was looking at in the museum.
In response, the Nazis held a tribunal for five of the men involved. While I hear stories about shrinking media freedom and threats to journalists daily—I’m the deputy editor at a freedom of expression magazine, Index on Censorship—as a Brit, it gave me chills to know this level of censorship had once played out on British soil. Without a civil defense, the men were given prison sentences in Germany totalling over eight years. Charles Machon, sentenced to two years and four months, and Joseph Gillingham, sentenced to 10 months, never made it home. Both died in a German prison.
Today, global press freedom is more restricted than it has been in recent memory. In many places across the world, information is controlled by authoritarian regimes. Criticism of these governments, real or perceived, can land people in jail, or worse, and journalists often risk their lives to report on it. The 2013 Press Freedom Index and its accompanying interactive world map assembled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), shows a handful of countries shaded green (good) and yellow (satisfactory). Pull the slider across to 2025, and the map dissolves into an alarming dark red (very serious) and shades of mid to dark orange, with a few countries in northern Europe clinging onto that green space for dear life. There’s not a lot of yellow either, indicating that concern over press freedom is not alarmist: Things have, in fact, gotten worse.
In Eastern Europe, the Russian- and English-language news outlet Meduza, founded in 2014, was headquartered in Latvia by its Russian-born founder, Galina Timchenko, for the safety of its staff. Russia is hostile toward independent media, and Meduza and others like it are labeled as “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations,” resulting in increased surveillance. People who work in or with an “undesirable outlet” can face prosecution, fines, and even prison time. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its media landscape has been further eroded, with most news sites owned by the state and their allies. According to RSF, there are currently 50 jailed journalists or media workers in the country.
In 2023, I spoke to student journalists from the online Russian outlet Doxa, who fled to Germany and other European countries after four members of their team were sentenced to two years of correctional labor in 2022 for a YouTube video where they defended freedom of assembly for young people. Months later, the publication’s editor and co-founder Armen Aramyan was added to the country’s “terrorist and extremist” list. In one high-profile case, for speaking out against the war in Ukraine, British-Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza was denied access to lawyers while languishing in jail between April 2022 and August 2024. Condemned to a 25-year sentence for his dissent, he was freed in the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the US since the Cold War. But even exiled Russian journalists like Kara-Murza are not safe, and face possible assassination attempts by the state. Elena Kostyuchenko is one of three female Russian journalists in exile who, in a similar period of time, suffered symptoms associated with poisoning.
Even countries, regions, and cities that have a history of press freedom have backslid in recent years. Once home to a thriving media landscape, Hong Kong has fallen hard since the crackdown on its anti-government protests in 2019-2020. In 2020, the headquarters of one of its last publications to criticize the authorities—independent media outlet Apple Daily—were raided by police. Shortly after the introduction of the National Security Law was imposed by Beijing that same year, Apple Daily’s publisher Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy activist, was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. The company has since closed, and Lai remains imprisoned.
According to RSF, China is the third worst country in the world for media freedom, after Eritrea and North Korea. The government has long seen the media as a tool for propaganda, sending out daily notices detailing censored topics. Journalists are kept under a watchful eye, including foreign journalists, who are followed by drones. While this censorship masks much of what is happening in China, prominent cases give some insight into the more honest reality. Over 100 journalists are currently detained in the country, a huge number of whom are Uyghurs who have reported on atrocities committed against the ethnic minority group in Xinjiang. Zhang Zan, who reported on the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, was jailed for four years, and once released, almost immediately rearrested. Reporter and #MeToo activist, Sophia Huang Xueqin, was held in solitary confinement for months and faced a closed-door hearing, before receiving a sentence of five years for “subversion against the state” in 2024 for her reporting on sexual assault.
Meanwhile, in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where journalists are widely persecuted, it is near impossible to be a female reporter at all. Since regaining control in 2021, there’s been increasing restrictions on both women and journalists—including a national ban on women’s voices being heard in public. Afghanistan’s female journalists now largely work in exile, notably including Zahra Joya, the founder of Rukhshana Media, who currently lives in the UK. In neighboring Iran, journalists face arbitrary arrests and prison sentences, as was the case for Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh, jailed for 10 years in January for “cooperating with the hostile U.S. government.”
Beyond legal pressure and intimidation, reporters in the region are also being killed at alarming rates. On June 14, Saudi Arabia executed prominent journalist Turki Al-Jasser for alleged treason, with no clear evidence, following his writing about corruption in the ruling family. Despite Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman playing for positive press, the reality is a country with a poor human rights record and a dire situation for press freedom under his rule.
It’s also no secret that Palestine has become the most dangerous place on the planet to be a journalist. Since Israel’s escalation following the October 2023 Hamas attacks, at least 250 journalists have been killed in Gaza, the majority of whom are Palestinian. Some journalists have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli army, according to the International Federation of Journalists, and others, critical of Hamas, have said they’ve been threatened by the militant group. According to the United Nations, it has officially become “the deadliest conflict ever for journalists.”
As well as the disastrous consequences for human lives, this intense pressure on journalists has created an information vacuum, in part due to Israel’s ban on international press entering Gaza. Al Jazeera has some of the only international journalists left on the ground, but they, too, are facing disruption and targeted killings. Elsewhere in the region, the Al Jazeera offices in the occupied West Bank were closed down by both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli authorities, with broadcasts suspended. The Israeli government also stopped Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Israel, calling them a propaganda tool for Hamas, a move condemned by many human rights and press groups. In May, Israeli police also raided their offices in East Jerusalem.
These are just some of the more glaring extremes of shrinking media freedom around the world, but there are many more, including in countries where press freedom is enshrined in law, such as the U.S. The second Trump administration has made it clear that they want to control which media outlets have press pool access. In one alarming example, they banned Associated Press (AP) journalists from White House press events after they continued to use the term “Gulf of Mexico” instead of their adopted “Gulf of America.” A judge later ordered the administration to restore AP’s access.
In June, the administration's threats to journalists became physical. As protests against ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in Los Angeles grew, several journalists were injured by “non-lethal” bullets (which, despite the name, can actually be lethal), including at least one Australian reporter caught on camera. Elsewhere in the city, a photographer was shot in the head with a rubber bullet, a British photojournalist had emergency surgery to remove a plastic bullet from his leg, and other journalists were tear-gassed. Back in April, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued its first ever travel advisory for journalists heading to the US because of increased security at the U.S. border. Since then, comedian Jimmy Kimmel was taken off air (and later reinstated) for remarks critical of the Trump administration. Yet in the wake of this huge story, Trump actually suggested that networks which give the president bad press should have their licenses taken away.
Closer to my home, the rich and powerful use abusive lawsuits known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, to silence journalists and others who speak out against them, in the UK and beyond. Some (but certainly not all) of these lawsuits come from oligarchs. Through defamation or privacy claims, critical views in the public interest are silenced with the backing of the British courts. Defending against one of these claims can be costly and drag on, which is exactly the point. It scares people, and stops reporters from doing their jobs for fear they could become the next SLAPP target.
In spite of the worsening global landscape, there are still organizations and journalists holding the line. The Anti-SLAPP Coalition is doing incredible work to put an end to SLAPPs. Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist who co-founded Rappler in 2021 has dedicated her investigative journalism to uncovering corruption within the Philippines government, and continues despite landing several charges against her, including charges of cyber libel and tax evasion. There is also the late Daphne Caruana Galizia, who unearthed numerous instances of Maltese state corruption, including her vital work on the Panama Papers scandal. In October 2017, she was murdered for it, and the campaign for justice continues.
There are countries, too, that give us a ray of hope, including Norway, which tops RSF’s 2025 World Freedom Press Index map. It’s a country that safeguards press freedom, has a vibrant independent media sector, and where editorial independence is valued. Namibia, while not falling within the green sweet spot, has historically been one of the best countries in Africa for press freedom, according to RSF. Journalists have faced verbal attacks and criticism from the government, and there are other areas where there is room for improvement. But in a world of press decline, it has risen six places (to 28th) in the most recent league table. (However, it’s important to note that it stood in 18th place as recently as 2022.) This comes down to a diverse media landscape, few barriers to coverage, and a judiciary that often defends the press.
That a free press is vital in order to uphold democracy always bears worth repeating; and with things as dire as they’ve become, we must defend it with everything we’ve got. In countries where that idea is under threat, or where democracy itself is in tatters, we desperately need journalists who are pushing back, who refuse to stop publishing, and who shine a light on corruption. They’re often the ones running incredible independent media, whether in their countries or in exile. And we need the public, international community, and human rights organizations to keep calling out the threats, and supporting these brave journalists, wherever they may be. Because once we’ve lost press freedom, it’s only a matter of time before we lose everything it protects.
[post_title] => The Shrinking Space for Media Freedom
[post_excerpt] => Once we lose a free press, we lose everything it protects.
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