The past year was another bleak one for journalists, with dozens killed and hundreds more behind bars around the world, according to media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In its annual round-up for 2025, RSF says that 67 reporters had been killed, 503 detained, 135 missing, and 20 held hostage as of December 1.
As in previous years, Russia was considered one of the worst places for journalists, ranking only behind China in the number of reporters it has incarcerated, with 48 journalists in detention. Belarus and Iran also remain among the world’s top jailers, with 33 and 21 journalists imprisoned respectively, placing both inside RSF’s global top 10.
Russia, however, stands out not only for its numbers but for the increasing severity of its pressure on the press.
Many reporters there have been imprisoned on controversial charges ranging from extremism to allegedly spreading false information about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
For example, in what RSF described as a “sham” process and “the first collective trial of journalists in Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin, Antonina Favorskaya, and Artyom Kriger were each sentenced to five and a half years in prison in April for “collaborating with an extremist organization” due to their coverage of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who died in prison in February 2024.
The worsening media situation in Russia has also forced many journalists into exile, and nearly 70 of them have been targeted by arrests or convictions in absentia in the past three years – 30 of them in 2025 alone, RSF reports.
'Choked By Censorship'
Beyond Russia, Moscow has also contributed to Ukraine becoming one of the world’s deadliest countries for media workers, with RSF saying “the Russian army continues to target reporters” there, resulting in fatalities from missile strikes, artillery fire, and occupation-related violence.
In October 2025, French photojournalist Antoni Lallican and Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Ivanchenko were targeted by Russian drones in eastern Ukraine. Lallican was killed instantly, while Ivanchenko lost a leg. That same month, reporters Alyona Hramova and Yevhen Karmazin were killed in a Russian drone strike that injured their colleague Oleksandr Kolychev.
Elsewhere in RFE/RL’s coverage area, the report outlines similarly severe pressures on independent journalism.
RSF has documented the near-total dismantling of independent media under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, with women journalists being disproportionately targeted. Since August 2021, more than 165 media professionals have been arrested — including 25 in 2025 — and the media monitor says “journalism has been choked by relentless censorship.”
The RSF report also highlights how many governments have continued to weaponize courts, police, and security services against the press.
In one high-profile case in Georgia, journalist Mzia Amaglobeli faced trial for supposedly resisting or using violence against a law enforcement officer. She was eventually sentenced to two years in prison in August, after what RSF called “an unfair trial characterized by numerous procedural irregularities.”
According to the media watchdog, Amaglobeli -- who jointly won this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought -- is the first woman journalist to be imprisoned in Georgia since independence due to “political motives,” which RSF described as “a symptom of the serious shift towards authoritarianism in this former Soviet republic in the Caucasus.”
In neighboring Azerbaijan, RSF highlighted the case of Sevinj Vagifgizi, the editor of the independent media outlet Abzas Media, who was sentenced along with six of her colleagues to nine years in prison after an “unfair and politically motivated trial based on trumped-up charges of ‘smuggling foreign currency.’”
According to the report, 25 journalists are currently behind bars in Azerbaijan, 20 of them arrested since 1 December 2024.
'Complete Impunity'
Meanwhile, in the Balkans, RSF said 98 journalists were physically assaulted in Serbia while covering widespread anti-corruption protests. It said that around half of these attacks “were carried out by the police with complete impunity, in a climate shaped by President Aleksandar Vucic’s verbal attacks against the press.”
Despite the deteriorating media landscape generally, RSF also pointed to some positive developments, including the release of nine Belarusian journalists, among them RFE/RL’s Ihar Losik, as well as Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khylyuk, who was freed from Russian detention in August.
Overall though, these were just a few bright spots in an otherwise grim state of affairs.
Outside RFE/RL’s coverage region, RSF notes that China continues to be the world’s leading jailer of journalists with 121 reporters in prison, while in Burma the military junta has intensified its repression of independent media.
In the Middle East, Gaza once again ranked among the world’s deadliest environments for the press, with journalists killed in air strikes, artillery fire, and cross-border attacks.
Taken together, the data underscores what RSF describes as a steadily worsening climate in which journalists “have gradually become collateral victims, inconvenient observers, bargaining chips, pawns in diplomatic games, men and women to be eliminated.”
