The Committee to Protect Journalists reported in its annual report released on Wednesday that 2025 recorded 129 journalist killings worldwide, making it the deadliest year for the profession since the organisation began tracking such data in 1992.
The watchdog said Israel was responsible for about two-thirds of these deaths, amounting to 89 journalists killed, and noted that this marked the second year in a row with record-high press fatalities linked to Israel’s military actions. It argued that journalists were increasingly being deliberately targeted.
The organisation also highlighted that journalists continued to be killed in countries not formally at war, including India, attributing this to what it described as governments’ ongoing failure to adequately safeguard press freedom, Scroll.in reported.
As an example, the group cited the killing of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar, who operated the YouTube channel Bastar Junction. It said he was allegedly murdered on January 1, 2025, after reporting on suspected irregularities in a road construction project in Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh, adding that his body was later found in a septic tank on the property of the contractor linked to the project.
The group’s chief executive, Jodie Ginsberg, warned that journalists were being killed in unprecedented numbers at a time when public access to reliable information was becoming more crucial than ever.
According to the report, the number of global conflicts has reached its highest level since World War II, increasing the dangers journalists face both because of the inherent risks of conflict reporting and because media workers are more frequently being singled out as targets.
The organisation said that in Sudan, nine journalists and media workers were killed in 2025, compared with six in 2024 and one in 2023, as the country’s civil war entered its third year. It also reported that four journalists were killed in Ukraine by Russian military drones in 2025, the highest annual toll for press fatalities in the conflict since 2022.
The watchdog further stated that, despite rising violence against journalists globally, Israel’s conduct towards media workers and what it described as disregard for international protections was unmatched. It added that extensive destruction of evidence in Gaza meant the true number of Palestinian journalists who may have been deliberately targeted might never be fully established.
The report was published nearly two months after the International Federation of Journalists said that 533 journalists had been imprisoned worldwide in 2025 because of their work. In its statement issued on December 31, the federation said the Asia-Pacific region accounted for the largest share of jailed journalists, with China and Myanmar recording the highest numbers in the region.
The federation also noted that in 2024, it had documented 122 journalist deaths and 516 imprisonments globally.