A tough yr for journalists in 2025, with a bit of hope for issues to show round | EUROtoday

By almost any measure, 2025 has been a tough yr for anybody involved about freedom of the press.

It’s more likely to be the deadliest yr on file for journalists and media employees. The variety of assaults on reporters within the U.S. almost equals the final three years mixed. The president of the United States berates many who ask him questions, calling one girl “piggy.” And the ranks of these doing the job continues to skinny.

It’s laborious to consider a darker time for journalists. So say many, together with Tim Richardson, a former Washington Post reporter and now program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America. “It’s safe to say this assault on the press over the past year has probably been the most aggressive that we’ve seen in modern times.”

Tracking killings and assaults towards journalists

Worldwide, the 126 media business individuals killed in 2025 by early December matched the variety of deaths in all of 2024, in accordance with the Committee to Protect Journalists, and final yr was a record-setter. Israel’s bombing of Gaza accounted for 85 of these deaths, 82 of them Palestinians.

“It’s extremely concerning,” mentioned Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Unfortunately, it’s not just, of course, about the sheer numbers of journalists and media workers killed, it’s also about the failure to obtain justice or get accountability for those killings.

“What we know from decades of doing this work is that impunity breeds impunity,” she said. “So a failure to tackle journalists’ killings creates an environment where those killings continue.”

The committee estimates there are at least 323 journalists imprisoned worldwide.

None of those killed this year were from the United States. But the work on American soil has still been dangerous. There have been 170 reports of assaults on journalists in the United States this year, 160 of them at the hands of law enforcement, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Many of those reports came from coverage of immigration enforcement efforts.

It’s impossible to look past the influence of President Donald Trump, who frequently seethes with anger at the press while simultaneously interacting with journalists more than any president in memory — frequently answering their cell phone calls.

“Trump has always attacked the press,” Richardson mentioned. “But in the course of the second time period, he is turned that into authorities motion to limit and punish and intimidate journalists.”

Journalists study rapidly they’ve a combat on their palms

The Associated Press discovered that rapidly, when Trump restricted the outlet’s entry to cowl him after it refused to comply with his result in rename the Gulf of Mexico. It launched a courtroom combat that has remained unresolved. Trump has additionally extracted settlements from ABC and CBS News in lawsuits over tales that displeased him, and is suing The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Long indignant a couple of perceived bias towards conservatives on PBS and NPR newscasts, Trump and his allies in Congress efficiently lower funding for public broadcasting as a complete. The president has additionally moved to close down government-run organizations that beam information to all components of the world.

“The U.S. is a major investor in media development, in independent media outlets in countries that have little or no independent media, or as a source of information for people in countries where there is no free media,” Ginsberg mentioned. “The evisceration of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America is another blow to press freedom globally.”

Others in his administration take Trump’s lead, like when his press workplace selected the day after Thanksgiving to launch an internet portal to complain about retailers or journalists being unfair.

“It’s part of this overall strategy that we’re seeing from certain governments, notably the United States, to paint all journalists who don’t simply (repeat) the narrative put out by the government as fake news, as dubious, as dodgy, as criminal,” Ginsberg mentioned.

Trump’s protection secretary, Pete Hegseth, has portrayed journalists as darkish figures skulking round Pentagon halls to uncover categorised secrets and techniques as his rationale for placing in restrictive guidelines for protection.

That’s led to probably the most notable instance of journalists preventing again: most mainstream information retailers gave up their credentials to work within the Pentagon moderately than agree to those guidelines, and are nonetheless breaking tales whereas working off web site. The New York Times has sued to overturn the principles. The newspaper additionally publicly defends itself when attacked by the president, equivalent to when he complained about its protection of his well being.

Despite the extra organized effort towards the press, the general public has taken little discover. The Pew Research Center mentioned that 36% of Americans reported earlier this yr listening to concerning the Trump administration’s relationship with the press, in comparison with 72% who mentioned that on the identical level in his first time period.

Polls persistently present that journalists have by no means been widespread, and are more likely to elicit little sympathy when their work turns into more durable.

“Really the harm falls on the public with so much of this because the public depends on this independent reporting to understand and scrutinize the decisions that are being made by the most powerful office in the world,” Richardson said.

Some reasons for optimism

The news industry as a whole is more than two decades in to a retrenchment caused largely by a collapse in the advertising market, and every year brings more reports of journalists laid off as a result. One of the year’s most sobering statistics came in a report by the organizations Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News: in 2002, there were 40 journalists for every 100,000 people in the United States and by this year, it was down to just over eight.

Asked if they could find reasons for optimism, both Ginsberg and Richardson pointed to the rise of some independent local news organizations, shoots of growth of growth in a barren landscape, places like the Baltimore Banner, Charlottesville Tomorrow in Virginia and Outlier Media in Michigan.

As much as they are derided in Trump’s America, influential Axios CEO Jim VandeHei noted in a column recently that reporters at mainstream media outlets are still working hard and able to set the nation’s agenda with their reporting.

As he told the AP: “Over time, people will hopefully come to their senses and say, ‘Hey, the media like anything else is imperfect but, man, it’s a nice thing to have a free press.'”

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David Bauder writes concerning the intersection of media and leisure for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.