Press Freedom
CPJ Updates
- Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths
- ‘We returned from hell’: Palestinian journalists recount torture in Israeli prisons
- 2025 journalist jailings remain stubbornly high; harsh prison conditions pervasive
- Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy
- 2024 is deadliest year for journalists in CPJ history; almost 70% killed by Israel
- In record year, China, Israel, and Myanmar are world’s leading jailers of journalists
- Haiti, Israel most likely to let journalists’ murders go unpunished, CPJ 2024 impunity index shows
- No justice for journalists targeted by Israel despite strong evidence of war crime
- On Edge: What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom
Reporter Without Borders
Killing the Messenger: 2025 INSI Report Highlights Global Attacks on Journalists
The International News Safety Institute (INSI) released the 2025 Killing the Messenger report, revealing 168 journalists and media workers killed in 2025. Last year’s report documented 145 deaths.
“There is no comfort to be found here. Courage does not compensate for the withdrawal of protection. Memory is no substitute for justice. Documentation does not equal accountability,” said Elena Cosentino, INSI director. “This report exists because forgetting has become the default. Remembering requires effort, choice and resistance – and that is exactly what is required from us all.”
68 deaths in Palestine and 32 deaths in Yemen claim 100 of the 168 journalists and media workers killed this year. Other countries with casualties that appear in the report are Afghanistan (2), Bangladesh (2), Colombia (1), DRC (3), Ecuador (2), Guatemala (2), Honduras (1), India (4), Iran (4), Iraq (1), Mexico (10), Nepal (1), Pakistan (3), Peru (4), Philippines (3), Russia (1), Saudi Arabia (1), Somalia (1), Sudan (9), Syria (1), Tanzania (1), Turkey (1), Ukraine (8), Uzbekistan (1), and Zimbabwe (1).
The 2025 analysis displays news media casualties in the past year, including graphs comparing journalist deaths with previous conflicts, and highlights the massacre of 31 journalists killed in a targeted Israeli attack.
“There is a tendency, when journalists are killed in war, to collapse their identities into the politics of the institutions they work for. As in previous cases in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, Israel has repeatedly failed to distinguish between military targets and journalists, justifying killings by designating media workers as terrorists or propagandists,” Laura Silvia Battaglia al-Jalal wrote.
Read the detailed and full report from INSI, produced by Cardiff School of Journalism, here.