s press freedom vanishing? The data suggests an unambiguous ‘yes.’ Journalists around the world are being censored, expelled from public spaces, jailed without cause or, in some cases, killed. And it’s getting worse. In 2025, in every region, press freedom marked its steepest decline in half a century according to the 2025 World Press Freedom Index and International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report.
And for the first time in its 23–year history, The World Press Freedom Index officially classified the global state of press freedom in 42 countries—home to over half the world's population— as “very serious.” It’s not just declining in a handful of autocracies—it’s happening in established democracies such as Finland, Sweden, Portugal and Uruguay. This is a structural, multi–decade erosion of press freedom, and it’s accelerating.
At the same time, the press has never been more visible, with journalists continuing to publish in conditions even of extraordinary difficulty. “Despite all [the] challenges we are facing—democracy going backwards, wars, more journalists in exile—we are alive; we are resilient; and we are doing the investigative journalism that is key for society: holding powers to account,” said Emilia Díaz–Struck, Executive Director of Global Investigative Journalism Network, last year.
Yet despite these fighting words, by every credible measure, the press has never been less able to do what democracy needs it to do. It’s not only about the metrics which have traditionally defined the freedom of the press. The risks to press freedom are now about more insidious forces that are reshaping journalism— forces that largely operate outside of the old playbook of obvious suppression. Modern repression works both through silence and distortion, and “through tactics that are increasingly hard to detect.” As a result, we’re living with more information, but less truth.
The question is no longer whether the press is technically free, but whether it’s functionally effective.
This is a distinction that most press freedom debates are failing to make. The goal of the new model of press repression is not to create silence but to manufacture confusion, and to do this through several overlapping tactics. These are worth calling out.
First, citizens have access to more information than at any point in history. Yet, as Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney argue in “The Infodemic,” the sheer volume of information has become part of the problem—weaponized as confusion, deployed as distraction, and used to drown out the credible alongside the false (or simply call it ‘fake news’).
The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025 documents what fills the vacuum: an accelerating shift toward algorithm–driven social video and personality–led content. Populist leaders across the world have learned to bypass journalistic scrutiny entirely—giving interviews to friendly podcasters, building audiences on platforms where correction is unwelcome, and treating the press as an opponent rather than an institution. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of public information. They are one voice among many in an algorithmic arena designed for clicks and engagement, not accuracy.
This matters because of the role of the press in a democracy. Journalists are more than a channel for information—their body of work provides a mechanism for accountability and creates the conditions under which citizens can judge the conduct of power. When that mechanism is weakened—not by censorship, but by distortion, fragmentation, and exhaustion, democracy does not immediately collapse. But it becomes harder to see that it is weakening at all.
Second, economic fragility. This has been cited as one of the most consequential forces in diminishing press freedom. Reporters without Borders found that in 2025, in 160 out of 180 countries, media outlets achieved financial stability only “with difficulty” or not at all. When outlets are hollowed out, journalism disappears from entire communities and rarely gets replaced by something equivalent; instead, news deserts are created. And where wealthy individuals ‘come to the rescue’ of media organizations, they often bring their political or commercial interests along with the money. Interests that serve to chip away at editorial independence. Journalists may not disappear from these media outlets but they gradually stop asking the questions that matter.
Then there is the legal weapon. Legal intimidation has become a precision instrument of control. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation—SLAPPs—are rarely designed to win in court. They are meant to damage reputations and send a signal to other journalists watching about what it costs to investigate the powerful. A journalist stops writing about the minister’s finances, not because anyone told her to, but because she’s done the math on what happens to journalists who do.
Cyber tactics also have a role to play in suppressing press freedom. As Zappulla has observed, “State–led foreign interference and information warfare is on the rise globally.” The power of cyber–tactics lies in their stealth, and they are “fast becoming the censorship instrument of choice amongst autocracies—deploying intrusive digital monitoring tools like spyware infections to identify journalists’ sources, map newsroom networks, and pre–empt or punish sensitive reporting. They are cheap, scalable and deniable.” Once a journalist’s source network is gone, it’s hard for journalism to operate effectively.
Maria Ressa, who knows more about surviving this kind of sustained assault than almost anyone alive, put it plainly at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in 2025: “It’s death by a thousand cuts. These little paper cuts are bleeding out and at some point, the body politic becomes so weak it dies.”
The result of all this pressure, whether through disinformation, financial, legal, reputational, or digital tactics, results in the phenomenon that is hardest to measure and most consequential of all: self–censorship. Journalists calculate risk before they file. Editors think about the lawsuit before they publish. Sources go quiet. Investigations never start.
Timothy Snyder's warning from “On Tyranny” is one of the sharpest formulations of this risk: "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom." When citizens can no longer agree on a common basis for truth, the formal institutions of democracy—elections, legislatures, courts—continue to operate, but the “connective tissue” that makes them meaningful starts to fray. Accountability depends not just on the existence of information, but on its capacity to be trusted, received, and acted on.
World Press Freedom Day produces a reliable annual ritual with indices cited, imprisoned journalists named, and governments condemned— and all of that is necessary. But there is a question that the ritual tends to skip, and it is the more important one. The standard measure of press freedom asks: Can journalists publish? The harder question, that better reflects the state of democracy, is this: Does their work still matter? Does journalism reach people in ways that shape what they believe? Does it make the powerful nervous? Does it give citizens the tools to hold their governments to account? That is not a minor technical distinction. It describes the difference between a press that is free and one that’s both free and functional.
a global affairs media network
A ‘free press’ that no longer works?
Sora Shimazaki via Pexels.
May 3, 2026
Modern press repression manufactures confusion, not silence. The question is whether journalism still functions, writes Lesley-Anne Long.
A
s press freedom vanishing? The data suggests an unambiguous ‘yes.’ Journalists around the world are being censored, expelled from public spaces, jailed without cause or, in some cases, killed. And it’s getting worse. In 2025, in every region, press freedom marked its steepest decline in half a century according to the 2025 World Press Freedom Index and International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report.
And for the first time in its 23–year history, The World Press Freedom Index officially classified the global state of press freedom in 42 countries—home to over half the world's population— as “very serious.” It’s not just declining in a handful of autocracies—it’s happening in established democracies such as Finland, Sweden, Portugal and Uruguay. This is a structural, multi–decade erosion of press freedom, and it’s accelerating.
At the same time, the press has never been more visible, with journalists continuing to publish in conditions even of extraordinary difficulty. “Despite all [the] challenges we are facing—democracy going backwards, wars, more journalists in exile—we are alive; we are resilient; and we are doing the investigative journalism that is key for society: holding powers to account,” said Emilia Díaz–Struck, Executive Director of Global Investigative Journalism Network, last year.
Yet despite these fighting words, by every credible measure, the press has never been less able to do what democracy needs it to do. It’s not only about the metrics which have traditionally defined the freedom of the press. The risks to press freedom are now about more insidious forces that are reshaping journalism— forces that largely operate outside of the old playbook of obvious suppression. Modern repression works both through silence and distortion, and “through tactics that are increasingly hard to detect.” As a result, we’re living with more information, but less truth.
The question is no longer whether the press is technically free, but whether it’s functionally effective.
This is a distinction that most press freedom debates are failing to make. The goal of the new model of press repression is not to create silence but to manufacture confusion, and to do this through several overlapping tactics. These are worth calling out.
First, citizens have access to more information than at any point in history. Yet, as Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney argue in “The Infodemic,” the sheer volume of information has become part of the problem—weaponized as confusion, deployed as distraction, and used to drown out the credible alongside the false (or simply call it ‘fake news’).
The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025 documents what fills the vacuum: an accelerating shift toward algorithm–driven social video and personality–led content. Populist leaders across the world have learned to bypass journalistic scrutiny entirely—giving interviews to friendly podcasters, building audiences on platforms where correction is unwelcome, and treating the press as an opponent rather than an institution. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of public information. They are one voice among many in an algorithmic arena designed for clicks and engagement, not accuracy.
This matters because of the role of the press in a democracy. Journalists are more than a channel for information—their body of work provides a mechanism for accountability and creates the conditions under which citizens can judge the conduct of power. When that mechanism is weakened—not by censorship, but by distortion, fragmentation, and exhaustion, democracy does not immediately collapse. But it becomes harder to see that it is weakening at all.
Second, economic fragility. This has been cited as one of the most consequential forces in diminishing press freedom. Reporters without Borders found that in 2025, in 160 out of 180 countries, media outlets achieved financial stability only “with difficulty” or not at all. When outlets are hollowed out, journalism disappears from entire communities and rarely gets replaced by something equivalent; instead, news deserts are created. And where wealthy individuals ‘come to the rescue’ of media organizations, they often bring their political or commercial interests along with the money. Interests that serve to chip away at editorial independence. Journalists may not disappear from these media outlets but they gradually stop asking the questions that matter.
Then there is the legal weapon. Legal intimidation has become a precision instrument of control. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation—SLAPPs—are rarely designed to win in court. They are meant to damage reputations and send a signal to other journalists watching about what it costs to investigate the powerful. A journalist stops writing about the minister’s finances, not because anyone told her to, but because she’s done the math on what happens to journalists who do.
Cyber tactics also have a role to play in suppressing press freedom. As Zappulla has observed, “State–led foreign interference and information warfare is on the rise globally.” The power of cyber–tactics lies in their stealth, and they are “fast becoming the censorship instrument of choice amongst autocracies—deploying intrusive digital monitoring tools like spyware infections to identify journalists’ sources, map newsroom networks, and pre–empt or punish sensitive reporting. They are cheap, scalable and deniable.” Once a journalist’s source network is gone, it’s hard for journalism to operate effectively.
Maria Ressa, who knows more about surviving this kind of sustained assault than almost anyone alive, put it plainly at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in 2025: “It’s death by a thousand cuts. These little paper cuts are bleeding out and at some point, the body politic becomes so weak it dies.”
The result of all this pressure, whether through disinformation, financial, legal, reputational, or digital tactics, results in the phenomenon that is hardest to measure and most consequential of all: self–censorship. Journalists calculate risk before they file. Editors think about the lawsuit before they publish. Sources go quiet. Investigations never start.
Timothy Snyder's warning from “On Tyranny” is one of the sharpest formulations of this risk: "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom." When citizens can no longer agree on a common basis for truth, the formal institutions of democracy—elections, legislatures, courts—continue to operate, but the “connective tissue” that makes them meaningful starts to fray. Accountability depends not just on the existence of information, but on its capacity to be trusted, received, and acted on.
World Press Freedom Day produces a reliable annual ritual with indices cited, imprisoned journalists named, and governments condemned— and all of that is necessary. But there is a question that the ritual tends to skip, and it is the more important one. The standard measure of press freedom asks: Can journalists publish? The harder question, that better reflects the state of democracy, is this: Does their work still matter? Does journalism reach people in ways that shape what they believe? Does it make the powerful nervous? Does it give citizens the tools to hold their governments to account? That is not a minor technical distinction. It describes the difference between a press that is free and one that’s both free and functional.
