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A murderous milestone for journalism in year of media expansion but much less freedom
A vast amount of information has not necessarily meant more reliable information, writes James Rodgers, a former BBC correspondent who held postings in Gaza, Moscow and Brussels
On December 10, the year 2025 reached a murderous milestone. In 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists had recorded 126 journalists and media workers killed, the highest number since the CPJ first began keeping records in 1992. In 2025, the figure was matched with three weeks of the year still to go.
One nationality, Palestinian, has paid by far the highest price. “Israel has killed almost 250 journalists since the Israel-Gaza war began in 2023,” the CPJ reported.
What does this mean for audiences' understanding of a world where international affairs are dominated by war, the climate crisis and unpredictable politics?
As far back as the early years of the US, and through the European revolutions of the 19th centuries, information and freedom have been linked. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Today, we have access to more media than at any other time in human history. But this vast amount of information has not necessarily meant more reliable information. Governments and tech companies striving to control the message often succeed.
Israel has banned international journalists entering Gaza. Palestinian journalists continue, at great risk, to report from the territory. Russia, meanwhile, has placed restrictions on reporting its “special military operation” – in a word, war – on Ukraine.
A generation ago, when the CPJ first began keeping data on journalists' deaths, it was different. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war allowed international media organisations freedom to work as never before in the former Soviet bloc.
As those countries embraced political change, they encouraged freer media to flourish within their new societies. True, these media were often influenced by political and business interests – the news media often are. But there was plurality where previously there had only been the party line.
The 1990s, imperfect though they were as a time of press freedom, were better than what has followed since. As the media academic and former foreign correspondent Peter Greste has persuasively argued, the aftermath of 9/11 involved state power extending, “into control over information and ideas. They did that by loosening the definitions of what constituted ‘terrorism' and ‘national security'”.
Greste's words were informed by the price he had paid for his own journalism. In late 2013, along with two colleagues, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohammad, he was detained in Egypt on terrorism charges. He spent 400 days in prison. The charges had resulted from the fact that he had spoken to the Muslim Brotherhood as part of his reporting.
“How do you accurately and fairly report on Egypt's ongoing political struggle without talking to everyone involved?” he wrote at the time.
It is not new that governments seek to control media. What is new is that the US is so proudly among them. Jefferson would probably not like what the current US government is doing, especially its recent policy of restricting access to the Pentagon for reporters who themselves refuse restrictions on their reporting.
The words that follow Jefferson's discussion of the relative merits of governments and newspapers are less well remembered: “But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”
Outdated gendered language aside, that, today, is the problem. For while we have more and more media, we have far less media freedom.
In the age of mass media, news organisations have largely controlled the means of distribution. Today, the tech companies take the lead. Not everyone is receiving the “papers”. Where they are not formally censored, they are harder to find – and cost money, unlike social media content.
Algorithms may be adjusted to give us more cat videos and fewer questions. Governments and criminals place physical restrictions, up to and including death, on journalists' work. Powerful politicians use legal action – or the threat of it – to silence trusted news organisations.
In my previous career as an international correspondent, I reported on wars in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. In the 1990s and 2000s, journalists were often restricted by governments not wanting bad news reported – but rarely simply banned as they increasingly seem to be now.
In Gaza and in Russia, international journalists are unable to access places they need to tell the story. In both cases, courageous reporters from those countries risk danger and even death to try to tell the world what is happening.
The restrictions placed upon journalists today may mean that governments seem to be winning at the moment. Their desire to control confirms the power to challenge that journalism still holds.
James Rodgers is Reader in International Journalism, City St George's, University of London.
This article was first published on The Conversation.
Source: Scroll
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