Protesters at a World Press Freedom Day event in Kuala Lumpur hold a banner that reads, “Targeting Journalist is A Crime” and a poster of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh who was killed while reporting in the West Bank in 2022. Israel accepted she was likely killed by IDF fire, but said it was an accident. File photo by Fazry Ismail/EPA-EFE
Feb. 25 (UPI) — Two-third of the 129 journalists killed around the world while doing their jobs in 2025 were at the hands of Israel, said a new report out Wednesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said its annual tally of journalists and media workers killed, the worst in the more than three decades since it started collating the data in 1992, came amid armed conflict at historically unprecedented levels globally.
A record 86 members of the press were killed by Israeli fire, up from the previous record of 85 in 2024, more than 60% of whom were Palestinian reporters from Gaza. The others were killed in Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, said the New York-based CPJ.
There were nine recorded journalist killings in Sudan for the year, six in Mexico, four in Russia — with that figure incorporating Ukrainian press members killed by Russian forces — and three in the Philippines. A dozen-and-a-half other countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America accounted for the remaining 21 deaths.
Of the 129 total, CPJ said 47 were documented targeted killings, which CPJ classifies as murder.
“Within the context of rising conflict worldwide, Israel’s disregard for the lives of journalists — and the international laws intended to protect them — is unparalleled. Israel has now killed more journalists than any other government since CPJ began collecting records in 1992, making the Israel-Gaza war (which incorporates Israel’s killings in Gaza as well as its lethal attacks in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran) the deadliest on record for journalists.
“Three of these killings, including one murder, occurred after the October 2025 ceasefire,” the committee said.
The CPJ said the surge in killings globally was being driven by an entrenched climate of impunity for attacks on press and media workers in which action to find and hold those responsible to account was increasingly rare.
“There have been almost no transparent investigations into the targeted killings in 2025 — the highest number of journalists deliberately killed for their work in the past decade — and no one has been held accountable,” said the CPJ.
“These killings of journalists violate international humanitarian law, which stipulates that journalists are civilians and should never be deliberately targeted,” it added.
That impunity emboldened those intent on silencing journalists, including in countries where there is no current armed conflict.
CPJ warned that the rise in killings was a reflection of the wider risks confronting press freedom amid the chilling effect of efforts to discredit journalists, abuse of the law to try to make fair, accurate and balanced reporting a crime and inflammatory rhetoric and harassment online, even in Western “liberal democracies.”
“Journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever. Attacks on the media are a leading indicator of attacks on other freedoms, and much more needs to be done to prevent these killings and punish the perpetrators,” warned CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
“We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news,” she added.
