May 3 is Press Freedom Day.
Each year at this time Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issues its Index on Press Freedom. The 2026 report is not happy reading. For the first time in the 25-year history of the report, more than half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom.
Chapter Treasurer Dan Kubiske (and SPJ International Community Chair) interviewed the RSF North American Executive Director Clayton Weimers about the report Thursday, April 30 just after the Index came out.
“You don’t arrive at a point like this because one particular event went the wrong way” Weimers said, “or one election swung in a certain direction, these are structural deficiencies that are global trends as well as national trends, and it’s a bad trend line.”
In the report the United States slid to #64, a drop of seven points from last year. Weimers said the attacks on the press from the Trump Administration and its actions have weakened the press freedom situation in the US. He cited defunding public media, the assaults on the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s independence and banning the AP from the White House for using “Gulf of Mexico” instead OF “Gulf of America.”
“Lawsuits against the media, the FCC being weaponized against media outlets, the DOJ being weaponized against individual journalists,” Weimers continued. “The list goes on.”
Other organizations came out with their own surveys in the past few weeks. All share the same gloomy news: journalists and press freedom are under attack and the situation keeps getting worse.
InterAmerican Press Association – Chapultepec Index on Freedom of Expression and the Press –
“This worsening situation is compounded by the most pronounced decline in press freedom among the 23 nations analyzed.”
“Although the United States only moved down one notch, from nations with Low Restrictions to countries with Restrictions, it dropped from fourth to eleventh place.”
Freedom House Global Freedom Report – The Growing Shadow of Autocracy
“Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025.
“Among countries rated Free, the United States, Bulgaria, and Italy have experienced the year’s largest declines. In the United States, an escalation in both legislative dysfunction and executive dominance, growing pressure on people’s ability to engage in free expression, and the new administration’s moves to undermine anticorruption safeguards all contributed to the negative score change.”
International Federation of Journalists – Global IFJ study exposes worldwide systemic surveillance of journalists
“Surveillance against journalists is now industrial in scale. Sophisticated spyware, once reserved for military intelligence – such as Pegasus, Predator and Graphite – has been repackaged as ‘lawful intercept’ technology and marketed to governments around the world.”
“This research concludes that surveillance of journalists is not a collection of isolated incidents but a systemic infrastructure of control.”