2025: 67 journos killed, 503 detained, 135 missing

How is it that, year after year, so many journalists meet such tragic fates? We need to be frank about something Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn addressed in a speech at Harvard in 1979: the decline in courage. Not the bravery of journalists—they have plenty—but the lack of courage within the international community.”

Those are the opening lines of the foreword by Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Sans Frontieres or Reporters Without Borders, for RSF’s “2025 Round-up of Journalists Killed, Detained, Missing and Held Hostage Worldwide.” The foreword’s title is: “This is where hatred and impunity lead.”

With a heavy heart, I printed RSF’s year-end report. Numbers, places, names, maps, and “such tragic fates” were popping off the pages. Journalism could be a dangerous, death-defying vocation or occupation.

Bruttin’s words ring true: “As key witnesses to history, journalists gradually become collateral victims, inconvenient observers, bargaining chips, pawns in diplomatic games, men and women to be eliminated. Let us be wary of false notions about reporters: no one gives their life for journalism—it is taken from them. Journalists do not just die—they are killed.”

I say this often: We take risks, yes, but no story is worth dying for. Who will tell the story, only you know if you are dead? As the saying goes, “If it was not written, it did not happen.”

Bruttin on his damning first lines: “Their apathy (citizens living in democracies) is an echo, and stems from the failures of international institutions, which are no longer capable of protecting journalists or upholding the law—particularly the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2222 concerning the protection of journalists in armed conflict. This is the consequence of a global decline in the courage of governments, which now do little more than issue statements when they ought to be implementing protective public policies.”

Something he said applies to Filipino journalists then and now, who were/are on the list of paid assassins in need of prey. Think National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and the Anti-Terrorism Act that may put journalists in the crosshairs of hired terminators.

“There is also another cause: journalists targeted by smear campaigns. When a journalist dies, some people think to themselves, ‘What were they doing there? They took too many risks.’ Many others say, ‘They were a nuisance. They got what they deserved.’ Or, ‘They are a traitor to their country, a threat to national security, it serves them right to be in prison,’ or even ‘They are servants of the elite. They had it coming.’ Today, journalists are even accused of colluding with terrorists so that their targeted assassinations can be justified.”

RSF’s grim report covering December 2024 to December 2025: Of the 67 media professionals killed over the last year, nearly half (43 percent) were killed in Gaza by the Israeli armed forces, and 53 (79 percent) were victims of war or organized crime. In the cartel-ridden country of Mexico, for example, 2025 was the deadliest of the past three years for journalists. The Russian army continues to target reporters in Ukraine. A year on from the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, many of the reporters arrested or captured under the regime remain nowhere to be found, making Syria the country with the highest number of missing media professionals (37) worldwide. China has the highest number of detained journalists (121).

Totals: missing journalists (135); killed (67); held hostage (20); detained (503).

The world map shows the Philippines having one journalist killed in 2025 and one still in detention. It was worse in previous years.

RSF’s list of “press freedom predators”: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Afghanistan’s Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada. “Security predators who kill and detain journalists”: Israel’s armed forces, Myanmar’s Security and Peace Commission, Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Key releases of detained journalists include Belarusian news professionals (nine) who had been detained in Russian prisons. Seven journalists from Burkina Faso, who had been forcefully conscripted into the army, were released between July and September. Journalists forced into exile are also listed.

RSF provides a detailed breakdown of numbers, places, names, and situations. Information is updated daily to be used later for the Annual World Press Freedom Index “to help fuel our legal and political advocacy, as well as our actions on the ground.” This “allows [RSF] to affirm with certainty or a great deal of confidence that the death, detention, or abduction of each journalist was a direct result of their journalistic work.”

For 40 years, RSF has worked hard to defend media freedom, independence, and pluralism all over the world. With headquarters in Paris, it has 15 bureaus and sections and over 150 correspondents worldwide. It has consultative status with the United Nations and Unesco.

Merci beaucoup, RSF, for keeping an eye on the key witnesses to history. I pray for a safer 2026 for journalists.

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