Press freedom has fallen to its lowest level in a quarter of a century, Reporters Without Borders warned on Thursday.
The media rights watchdog also known as RSF cited as examples President Trump’s “systematic” attacks on journalists, and Saudi Arabia, which executed a journalist in 2025.
“For the first time in the (RSF) Index’s 25-year history, more than half the world’s countries now fall into the ‘difficult’ or ‘very serious’ categories for press freedom,” a statement said.
The average score of all 180 countries and territories that were surveyed has never been so low, RSF said.
At the same time, the share of the world’s population living in a country where the press freedom situation is considered “good” has plunged from 20% to less than 1%.
Only seven countries in Northern Europe, led by Norway, fall into this category.
The United States, which had already fallen from a “fairly good” to a “problematic” situation in 2024, the year of Mr. Trump’s re-election, dropped a further seven places to 64, it said.
Beyond his attacks on the press — “a systematic policy” — the situation in the United States has been marked by the detention and subsequent expulsion of Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara, who denounced the arrest of migrants, and by drastic cuts to funding for U.S. international broadcasting, the report said.
The steepest decline in 2026 was in junta-led Niger (120th, down 37 places), underscoring the wider decline in press freedom in the Sahel region seen in recent years as attacks by armed groups and ruling juntas have suppressed the right to balanced information from diverse sources, RSF said.
In some countries, the state of press freedom has hardly changed, like in China, North Korea and Eritrea — which ranked last for the third consecutive year, RSF said.
“Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the two most dangerous regions for journalists in the world, as they have been for 25 years,” it said. “This is reflected in the ranking of Vladimir Putin’s Russia (172nd), which has continued its war of aggression in Ukraine and remains one of the worst countries for press freedom.”
It said Russia “has become a specialist in using laws designed to combat terrorism, separatism and extremism to restrict press freedom,” and held 48 journalists behind bars as of this month.
RSF noted that post-Assad Syria saw the biggest improvement in press freedom, climbing 36 places in the ranking.
RSF is the acronym for the group’s original French name, Reporters sans frontières. It was founded in France in 1985.