Press Freedom
CPJ Updates
- 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
- Forced to flee: Exiled journalists face unsafe passage and transnational repression
- Israel-Gaza war brings 2023 journalist killings to devastating high
- 2023 prison census: Jailed journalist numbers near record high; Israel imprisonments spike
Reporter Without Borders
OPC Warns of Dire Threats on World Press Freedom Day
NEW YORK, May 2, 2025 — On World Press Freedom Day, the Overseas Press Club of America warns of the dire threats to press freedom in many countries around the world and has rising and significant concerns about the state of press freedom in the US, even though such rights are constitutionally protected here.
As OPC president Scott Kraft said in opening our group’s awards celebration last month, press freedom is under serious threat as governments around the world are trying to manipulate, silence and intimidate those who bring news to the public. And for the first time in memory we face many of those same threats at home, as Kraft detailed.
Authoritarian-run governments use control of the press as a tool in trying to silence detractors and to prevent the nation’s citizenry from having accurate information to make up their own minds about what is happening in their countries. Seeking to silence the press is often part of a campaign of repression and manipulation of the citizenry – keeping the populace in the dark seeks to lessen opposition and free debate.
The OPC joins other organizations in expressing grave concern about recent actions in the US that could have dire consequences for the press and the public’s right to know including the White House communications office taking over control of procedures for coverage of White House briefings and access to communications with the president and his administration. Even with constitutional protections of free speech, such actions seek to undermine the ability of a free and open press to communicate timely information to the public.
In celebrating World Press Freedom Day, the OPC stands by the constitutional protections afforded US journalists and underscores their right to report without fear of harassment, intimidation or impediments to access. Journalism is an honorable profession – not a crime, not in the US or anywhere in the world.
Overseas Press Club of America
May 2, 2025