A rough year for journalists in 2025, with a little hope for things to turn around

By nearly any measure, 2025 has been a rough year for anyone concerned about freedom of the press.

It’s likely to be the deadliest year on record for journalists and media workers. The number of assaults on reporters in the U.S. nearly equals the last three years combined. The president of the United States berates many who ask him questions, calling one woman “piggy.” And the ranks of those doing the job continues to thin.

“It’s safe to say this assault on the press over the past year has probably been the most aggressive that we’ve seen in modern times,” says Tim Richardson, a former Washington Post reporter and now program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America.

Worldwide, the 126 media industry people killed in 2025 by early December matched the number of deaths in all of 2024, which was already a record-setting year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel’s bombing of Gaza accounted for 85 of those deaths, 82 of them Palestinians.

“It’s extremely concerning,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Unfortunately, it’s not just, of course, about the sheer numbers of journalists and media workers killed, it’s also about the failure to obtain justice or get accountability for those killings.”

Ginsberg warns of a dangerous cycle: “What we know from decades of doing this work is that impunity breeds impunity. So a failure to tackle journalists’ killings creates an environment where those killings continue.”

The committee estimates at least 323 journalists are imprisoned worldwide.

While no journalists were killed in the United States this year, working on American soil has still proven dangerous. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented 170 reports of assaults on journalists in the United States this year, with 160 at the hands of law enforcement. Many of these incidents occurred during coverage of immigration enforcement efforts.

President Donald Trump’s influence on press relations cannot be overlooked. He frequently expresses anger toward the press while simultaneously interacting with journalists more than any president in memory—often answering their cell phone calls directly.

“Trump has always attacked the press,” Richardson noted. “But during the second term, he’s turned that into government action to restrict and punish and intimidate journalists.”

The Associated Press experienced this shift firsthand when Trump limited the outlet’s access after it refused to follow his directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico. AP launched a court fight that remains unresolved. Trump has also extracted settlements from major networks including ABC and CBS News in lawsuits over unfavorable coverage, and is currently suing The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

The administration has taken concrete steps affecting media organizations. Congress, aligned with Trump’s criticism of perceived bias against conservatives, successfully cut funding for public broadcasting. The president has also moved to shut down government-run organizations like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America that broadcast news globally.

“The U.S. is a major investor in media development, in independent media outlets in countries that have little or no independent media, or as a source of information for people in countries where there is no free media,” Ginsberg said. “The evisceration of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America is another blow to press freedom globally.”

Other administration officials have followed Trump’s lead. His press office chose the day after Thanksgiving to launch a web portal specifically for complaints about “unfair” media coverage.

“It’s part of this overall strategy that we’re seeing from certain governments, notably the United States, to paint all journalists who don’t simply repeat the narrative put out by the government as fake news, as dubious, as dodgy, as criminal,” Ginsberg explained.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has characterized journalists as nefarious figures seeking classified secrets to justify implementing restrictive coverage rules. In response, most mainstream news outlets surrendered their Pentagon credentials rather than accept these conditions. They continue breaking stories while working off-site, and The New York Times has sued to overturn the rules.

Despite these increasingly organized efforts against the press, public attention has waned. The Pew Research Center reports only 36% of Americans heard about the Trump administration’s relationship with the press this year, compared to 72% at the same point in his first term.

Polls consistently show journalists lack popularity and are unlikely to generate significant public sympathy when facing obstacles. “Really the harm falls on the public with so much of this because the public depends on this independent reporting to understand and scrutinize the decisions that are being made by the most powerful office in the world,” Richardson said.

The broader news industry continues a two-decade retrenchment driven largely by advertising market collapse. A sobering statistic from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News reveals that in 2002, there were 40 journalists for every 100,000 Americans—by 2025, that number had plummeted to just over eight.

When asked for reasons for optimism, both Ginsberg and Richardson pointed to emerging independent local news organizations like the Baltimore Banner, Charlottesville Tomorrow in Virginia, and Outlier Media in Michigan.

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei recently noted that despite criticism in Trump’s America, reporters at mainstream outlets continue setting the national agenda through their reporting. “Over time, people will hopefully come to their senses and say, ‘Hey, the media like anything else is imperfect but, man, it’s a nice thing to have a free press,'” he told the AP.