World Press Freedom Day

A free and independent press remains a foundation for peace and justice, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said, highlighting the growing importance of credible journalism in an evolving digital landscape shaped by artificial intelligence. Marking World Press Freedom Day , she stressed that credible reporting can help counter disinformation and foster greater understanding, while reaffirming that freedom of expression, the ethical use of technology, and the safety of journalists are essential for peaceful societies .

Across Latin America, journalists and communicators strengthen democracy and foster peace, with support from the UN Development Programme (UNDP). One such initiative is Ama Llulla in Peru – meaning “you shall not lie” in Quechua – which was launched in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and a tense electoral period. Promoted by UNDP and coordinated by the media outlet Ojo Público, the project brings together more than 20 local and digital media organizations. Using technological tools and artificial intelligence (AI), the network verifies information and translates it into Indigenous languages, including Quechua Collao, Quechua Chanka and Asháninka.  Read more about the initiative! 

A new UNESCO report highlights a sustained global decline in freedom of expression, alongside rising pressure on journalists and media institutions. The agency’s World Trends in Freedom of Expression report, covering the period from January 2022 to November 2025, points to a 10 per cent drop in the global freedom of expression index since 2012. Source: UNESCO It notes that self-censorship has risen by 63 per cent worldwide, while control over newspapers, television, radio and digital platforms has increased by 48 per cent. Academic and artistic freedom are also in decline.  Read the report here .

Media freedom is not a given and its absence frequently leaves communities and vulnerable individuals in danger. To mark World Press Freedom Day , we’ll be hearing from UN agencies, along with war correspondents and reporters who face major obstacles trying to do their job. The aim is to get a better understanding about what press freedom means in practice and why it is worth defending.

  Across the world, especially in conflict zones, journalists are facing unpredictable dangers. They are often, wrongly, seen as legitimate targets. CNN's Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward tells UN News that “ we have entered a very dangerous new era where journalists have become fair game ”.  

  Reports of online violence against women journalists have doubled since 2020, with serious impacts on their health and well-being, according to a study published by UN Women and partners. The report highlights how online violence targeting women in public life is increasingly becoming more technologically sophisticated, invasive and damaging in the artificial intelligence (AI) era. Read the full story here .

Over the last two years; there have been at least 300 internet shutdowns in more than 54 countries, severely restricting people’s access to information , according to UNESCO .The shutdowns can take different forms, such as a complete block on Internet or the blocking of access to social media platforms . The first major shutdown happened in Egypt in 2011, during the Tahrir Square protests. Hundreds of arrests and killings followed. Iran has been under an internet shutdown for 66 days, cutting access for 90 million people and threatening access to information. 2024 was the worst year on record for internet shutdowns since 2016.

  Freedom of expression globally is on the decline according to UNESCO which says that self-censorship has also increased significantly in the face of authoritarian regimes. The World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development report shows a 10 per cent decrease in freedom of expression since 2012. UNESCO’s Sylvie Coudray says that decline “mirrors only three moments in the last century.” World War I, World War II and the height of the Cold War. Watch the full interview !

  The occupied Palestinian territories, which includes Gaza and the West Bank, is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. The UNESCO is supporting journalists there providing guidance on fact-checking and safety guidelines, as explained by Hala Tannous who is based in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Watch the full interview!

States which allow journalists to be attacked also need to be held accountable , according to Belgian correspondent, Wilson Fache, who has reported from war zones for more than a decade. "I see again and again and again journalists and reporters being targeted," he tells UN News.

In Gaza, nearly 300 reporters have been killed since Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on 7 October 2023, according to the UN human rights office, OHCHR. That makes the devastated enclave the world’s most dangerous place for journalists. “ Don't let depression attack journalists or democracy will die ,” stressed Rawan Damen, Director General of the organization Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism at a conference on the future of journalism Gaza convened by UN-partner EBU in Geneva last week.

Press freedom requires safe access for credible news gathering to build trust in a fractured world , says Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications.

How do you work safely as a reporter when violent crime gangs control your patch? That’s the challenge facing Haitian print and radio journalist Jean Daniel Sénat, who explains that he and his colleagues are “constantly under threat” from criminal groups. The UNESCO’s Observatory of Killed Journalists points to 14 media workers killed in Haiti since 2021. Sometimes the danger comes from an unexpected source: the police, who suspect some journalists of working for gangs as they are able to enter gang-controlled neighbourhoods, Jean Daniel alleges.  Read the UN News story here

Former chief of news and media at the International Labour Organization (ILO), Rosalind Yarde, highlights how fake news can be deadly : “More journalists and media workers were killed in 2025 since records began. However, the threat to independent journalism goes far beyond warfare. Misinformation, disinformation and fake news, combined with economic pressures and increasingly concentrated and politicised media ownership, have diminished the ability of many journalists to speak truth to power. "The result is weakened democracies and unravelling social cohesion. "The 2024 UK racist riots, following the brutal murders of three children, were sparked by faked AI imagery and social media disinformation that falsely claimed that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived illegally from across the English Channel in a small boat. "Millions of people believed it because the ground had been laid over decades by right-wing mainstream media that had deliberately and ...

“When attacks on the media are normalized, freedom itself begins to decay,” says Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In his message for World Press Freedom Day, Mr. Türk insists that Gaza has become a “deathtrap for the media”, with nearly 300 journalists killed since October 2023. The UN rights chief also underscores the “growing threats” to journalists around the world “who document horrific atrocities, expose corruption, and scrutinize business operations”.  Read the full story.

“This is a very risky profession,” Haitian journalist Oberde H. Charles tells us. Many colleagues have left the country, he explains, driven out by the violence that has threatened them and their families. “Those journalists who continue to work in Haiti despite the dangers are brave, truly brave,” he says.  Here's what press freedom means to Oberde; Read the UN News story .

“The Taliban have waged a war on women’s rights,” insists Zahra Nader, Afghan journalist and founding editor-in-chief of Zan Times. Despite the difficulties and dangers of reporting in Kabul and beyond since the de-facto authorities seized power in August 2021, women are continuing to report on the rights and freedoms taken away from them. “ Press freedom is not about the right to speak, it’s about the right to be heard ,” Zahra tells UN News.

Lebanon: heavy toll of reporting in a war zone. It’s no surprise to learn that news-gathering during a conflict is extremely stressful and can lead to mental harm. The UN migration agency, IOM, promotes support for reporters confronted with violence, trauma and mass displacement. Listen to IOM Programme Officer Sarah Wilson remarks frrom Lebanon !

“It is to grieve people you may never have met personally yet feel bound to them through shared purpose and risk. It is to carry constant fear while continuing to speak and to document what others would prefer to deny or erase. It is to operate in environments where silence is encouraged through intimidation, and where visibility itself can become a form of danger. “To survive as a journalist is to witness colleagues being killed repeatedly,” says AFP journalist Christina Assi . The photojournalist came under attack by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in October 2023 while reporting from the Israel-Lebanon border and had her lower leg amputated. Here’s more from her statement for World Press Freedom Day 2026: "From Shireen Abu Akleh to Amal Khalil, courage has come at a cost while they continued reporting despite clear threats. Their killings do not erase the truth they worked on to document, and no amount of justification can change what happened. After three years and more tha...

Injured in a 2023 Israeli attack in Lebanon, the Al Jazeera correspondent Carmen Joukhadar, is back on the ground reporting from the country’s south. She talks to Daniel Johnson about her work and the threats facing journalists in Lebanon.

“They’re all going to kill us because of you!” the devastating cry one Gaza journalist will never forget from her 12-year-old daughter, shortly after receiving a telephone threat. In Gaza alone, nearly 300 reporters have been killed since Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on 7 October 2023, according to the UN human rights office, OHCHR. And while foreign journalists continue to be barred from entering Gaza, local reporters have borne the responsibility of documenting the conflict, often at extreme personal cost. As part of events to mark World Press Freedom Day, UN-partner the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) brought Gaza journalists together to share their experiences in Geneva. Several spoke of targeted killings, threats against family members and the difficulty of finding somewhere to live. “I’m sorry but journalists cannot live with us,” one reporter remembered being told by neighbours, while another described how his father had delivered the same message, for fear of being...

  "People often say that in war, truth is the first casualty. But far too frequently, the first casualties are the journalists who risk everything to report that truth – not only in war, but wherever those in power fear scrutiny. Across the globe, media workers risk censorship, surveillance, legal harassment – and even death. Recent years have seen a sharp rise in the number of journalists killed – often deliberately targeted – in war zones. Eighty-five percent of the crimes committed against journalists go uninvestigated and unpunished: an unacceptable level of impunity. Economic pressures, new technologies, and active manipulation are also putting press freedom under unprecedented strain. When access to reliable information erodes, mistrust takes root. When public debate is distorted, social cohesion weakens. And when journalism is undermined, crises become far more difficult to prevent and resolve. All freedom depends on press freedom. Without it, there can be no human rights,...

  The planet is facing a triple environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Simultaneously, there is a worldwide erosion of press freedom and democratic backsliding, undermining the role of journalism in finding evidence-based solutions. This is magnified by algorithm-driven, anti-science disinformation on the internet. Even as public awareness about climate-induced disasters grows, denialism of climate change is evolving: outright rejection is giving way to a ‘new denial’, which accepts the basic facts of climate change but casts doubt on its seriousness and spreads misleading narratives and conspiracy theories. As a result, journalists and climate scientists are increasingly being silenced by trolling and threats. This session tracks these trends and argues for greater investment in investigative journalism and training in digital techniques. Coverage needs to go beyond soft-focus stories to seek the economic and political roots of climate breakdown....

  In a world where women and marginalized groups have made hard-won gains in public representation, a coordinated backlash is underway. Digital platforms – once tools of empowerment – are increasingly weaponized to silence, intimidate, and discredit women, particularly those in media, politics, and activism. Gendered disinformation, cyberviolence, and defamation campaigns are rising sharply, often backed by powerful political and economic forces. These attacks are not isolated; they reflect a broader, systemic effort to reinforce patriarchal control and reverse the progress toward equality. This chapter outlines the links between online and offline violence, the erosion of journalistic independence, and the misuse of laws to restrict women’s freedom of expression. It also calls for urgent action: from strengthening legal protections to reforming media structures and ensuring women’s access to justice and leadership.  What is at stake is freedom for women, for truth, for us all...

  Over the past two decades, technologies have emerged that both amplify and stymie freedom of expression. In just the last four years, rapid technological advancements have accelerated this trend. Yet these tools do not operate in a vacuum: their design, deployment, and governance are shaped by the economic and political interests of the companies that control them. These technological advances are expanding and constraining public discourse. The use of these technologies is reshaping journalism and open debate, pioneering new forms of expression. The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has amplified content creation, but its ability to produce synthetic or altered material, coupled with rapid digital dissemination, has disrupted information integrity at scale. Paradoxically, despite the risks, AI-powered platforms are increasingly used by the public and in some cases are seen as more trustworthy than traditional news outlets. AI sits today at a volatile intersection f...

This session highlights the critical relationship among freedom of expression, independent journalism, and constitutional democracy . Global progress in democracy, especially between 1980 and 2010, was accompanied by constitutional and legal reforms that enhanced protections for journalists and greater government transparency. However, since 2010, there has been a global decline in the global state of democracy, which also includes a notable deterioration in freedom of expression. This trend has continued over the last four years. It has been driven, among other things, by the weakening of accountability mechanisms for public and private actors that are key to the protection of human rights and democratic systems. The chapter notes that the rise of digital platforms has transformed information ecosystems. These developments had significant positive effects but also led to new and major challenges that erode public trust and undermine the ability of journalists to counter disinformatio...