April 30, 2026 / 5:42 AM EDT / CBS/AFP
Press freedom around the world has slid to its weakest point in 25 years, the media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Thursday. The watchdog’s latest index shows an unprecedented number of countries now classified as having ‘difficult’ or ‘very serious’ conditions for journalism, and the overall global score is the lowest in the index’s quarter-century history.
RSF reported that the proportion of the world population living in countries rated as having ‘good’ press freedom has collapsed from 20 percent to under 1 percent. Only seven nations, all in Northern Europe and led by Norway, remain in that top category.
The United States has continued to lose ground, slipping seven places to 64th in the ranking. RSF said the U.S. moved from ‘fairly good’ to ‘problematic’ in 2024 after President Trump’s re-election and pointed to what it described as sustained, systematic attacks on the press. The group also cited specific incidents, including the detention and expulsion of Salvadoran reporter Mario Guevara after he covered migrant arrests, along with deep cuts to funding for U.S. international broadcasting.
Russia, ranked 172nd, has tightened restrictions through laws framed as countering terrorism, separatism and extremism, RSF said. The organization noted that as of April 2026 Russia was holding 48 journalists in detention.
The sharpest single-country decline this year occurred in Niger, where the ranking fell 37 places to 120th. RSF linked that drop to the rule of the junta and a broader deterioration across the Sahel, where armed groups and military regimes have stifled independent reporting and reduced the diversity of information sources.
RSF, founded in France in 1985 and also known by its French name Reporters sans frontières, monitors press freedom worldwide and publishes an annual index assessing media freedom conditions in countries and territories.
The report underscores a widening global squeeze on journalism, with government pressure, legal restrictions and violence combining to limit independent reporting in many regions.