Press freedom has hit its lowest level in 25 years as RSF cites authoritarian governments as well as tech platforms.

TL;DR

RSF’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index notes the lowest press freedom in the last 25 years. For the first time, more than half of all countries are rated as “difficult” or “very serious,” and less than one percent of the world’s population lives in a country rated as “good.” The United States dropped to 64th place, a historic low. The report points to authoritarian governments and the criminalization of journalism in 110 countries, as well as structural causes such as the elimination of fact-checking by tech platforms, especially Meta, and Musk’s almost daily attacks on the media.

For the first time in its 25-year history World Press Freedom Indexnow more than half of the world’s countries “difficult” or “very seriousThis indicator is 52.2 percent, up from 13.7 percent when Reporters Without Borders first published the index in 2002. The proportion of the world’s population living in a country with a “good” rating for press freedom has dropped from 20 percent to one percent, and it ranks seventh in all of Northern Europe. The usual suspects, emergency legislation designed to silence journalists and physical violence that killed more than 220 media workers, will also not discuss the tech industry since October, the report published on April 3020. the platforms themselves.Authoritarian states, complicit or incompetent political powers, predatory economic actors and poorly regulated online platformsAnne Bokande, RSF’s editorial director, said it bears collective responsibility for the decline. The tech industry appears in all but the first category.

Numbers

In the 2026 index, freedom of the press has worsened in 100 out of 180 countries. More than 60 percent of countries, 110 out of 180, have criminalized media workers, including anti-terrorism laws, national security laws, and vaguely worded disinformation legislation. The legal environment showed the fastest deterioration of any indicator, with declines recorded in more than 60 percent of countries. Russia, ranked 172nd, has 48 journalists behind bars. China is in 178th place. India is ranked 157th. Hong Kong dropped 122 places to 140th place after Beijing tightened its grip on the territory. El Salvador has fallen 105 places since 2014. It fell 75 places because the Georgian government increased pressure on the press. Eritrea is last for the third consecutive year. One significant advance was for Syria, which rose 36 places after the ouster of the Assad regime, the biggest one-year gain in the index’s history.

The United States fell seven places to 64th, its lowest ranking ever. RSF is attributed The Decline of the Trump Administration “systematic“The detention and deportation of Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara, who reported on attacks on press freedom, including migrant detentions,”sharp decline“In funding US international broadcasting, in efforts to shut down public broadcasters, and in the use of government agencies and lawsuits to punish media outlets critical of the administration.Since taking office, Trump and his administration have waged a coordinated war on press freedom, and we will live with the consequences for years to come.” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF’s North American division. The Varieties of Democracy Institute’s 2026 Democracy Report found that freedom of expression in the United States has fallen to World War II levels. The country that historically positioned itself as the global guarantor of press freedom is now ranked below Burkina Faso.

Platforms

The 2026 index gives more space to technology companies than previous editions, and the language is not diplomatic. How RSF describes “The growing dominance of large technology companies and the consequences of their changing policies and practices have created fertile ground for hate speech and misinformation to spread online.” The report cites specific mechanisms: platform algorithms favoring disinformation over verified reporting, the facilitation of Russian disinformation campaigns through platform infrastructure, and the removal of platform-integrated fact-checking.

Reference is made to the last point Meta’s decision to cancel its fact-checking program and replace it with the system modeled in X’s Community Notes. RSF called it “Musking” Meta-platforms, which is a process “private sector interests outweigh the need for fact-based public discourse.Elon Musk himself is featured in the report. From September 2024 to September 2025, RSF documented more than 1,000 anti-media content posted by Musk on X, which amounts to an average of three attacks per day. RSF filed a legal complaint against X in France, alleging that the platform allowed the spread of technology. The two most powerful social media platforms in the industry are now, according to RSF’s assessment. is actively hostile to the journalism it was once expected to support.

Economy

RSF’s report addresses structural threats to press freedom, but does not focus on economic threats, which may be more consequential. The advertising revenue that once funded newsrooms globally has been usurped by the same technology platforms whose algorithms now favor disinformation over journalism. Google was fined 250 million euros As France’s competition authority uses news content without permission or payment to train AI models, it’s a decision that demonstrates an asymmetry: platforms extract value from journalism, use it to train models and populate search results, while the entities that produce it lose the revenue they need to operate. Publishers have started suing AI companies to break their contents, but economic damage has already been done. The business model that sustained independent journalism for a century, selling advertising to an audience without an alternative source of information, ceased to exist as audiences migrated to platforms controlled by companies with no institutional commitment to press freedom.

The convergence of AI and disinformation makes the problem even more difficult. AI-generated deep fakes, voice clones, and synthetic media have made disinformation cheaper and faster than verifying true information. The cost asymmetry is structural: deep fraud can be created in seconds; fact-checking requires hours of human labor. AI risks more visible in the information environment, where technology’s ability to create reasonable content at scale intersects with platform incentive structures that reward engagement for accuracy. The 2026 index notes the result: a world in which the infrastructure for disseminating false information is more sophisticated, more accessible, and better funded than the infrastructure for producing true information.

War zones

Gaza remains the world’s deadliest place for journalists. More than 220 media workers have been killed since October 2023, including at least 70 while doing their jobs. According to RSF’s calculations, the Israeli army is the biggest killer of journalists in the world. 20 Palestinian journalists are still in Israeli prisons, 16 of whom were arrested in Gaza and the West Bank over the past two years. In a February report based on the testimony of 59 imprisoned Palestinian journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists documented systematic abuses, including torture, severe beatings, sexual assault, starvation and medical neglect. Israel has repeatedly cut off communications in the Gaza Strip and continues to completely deny foreign media access to the territory. Israel’s own ranking in the 2026 index dropped four places.

Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the two most dangerous regions for journalists in general. Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to take its toll among media workers, and Moscow’s use of anti-terrorism and anti-extremism laws to jail journalists has become a model adopted by other authoritarian governments. India, ranked 157th, has adopted sedition laws, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and foreign contribution rules to criminalize news the government deems hostile. In all these countries, the pattern is the same: laws intended for other purposes, national security, counter-terrorism, public order, are changed to criminalize journalism, and the platforms on which journalism is disseminated either amplify the disinformation that suppresses it, or, in the event of a blackout, are shut down altogether.

Trajectory

The 2026 RSF index does not offer optimism and there is no reason to provide any. The trajectory is clear: press freedom has declined in each year of the index’s existence, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Political alignment between governments and technology platforms it is tightening rather than loosening. Trump’s AI policy platforms clearly favor minimal regulation of companies that disrupt the information environment. Musk’s political activities, which include government advisory roles, platform ownership, and personal attacks on journalists, represent a new category of threat that the RSF index was not originally designed to measure: a tech oligarch who is also a political actor, platform owner, and press antagonist. Zuckerberg’s rejection of fact-checking in favor of a system that leaves content moderation to the masses follows the same logic. Platforms are not neutral infrastructure. They are editorial systems that prioritize the accuracy of the information they disseminate for commercial and political reasons.

Seven countries where press freedom is still valuedgood,” Norway, the Netherlands, Estonia and four other small northern European democracies are now statistical outliers, accounting for less than one percent of the world’s population. The other 99 percent live in countries with the best press freedom.satisfactory” and, at worst, a direct threat to the safety of anyone who attempts to engage in journalism. The RSF index measures conditions as they are. What it fails to measure is the cumulative effect of 25 years of decline in the quality of information the public receives, the decisions made based on that information, and the accountability of institutions, including tech companies. Those in jail, exile, or dead.