February 25, 2026 | 05:50 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Altogether 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Wednesday in an annual report.
That makes 2025 the deadliest year for press deaths since the CPJ began collecting such data more than 30 years ago.
"Journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever," CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.
"We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news," she said.
Most Journalist Deaths in Conflict Settings
Over three-quarters of all the fatalities in 2025 occurred amid conflicts, the CPJ said.
The report blamed two-thirds of the deaths on Israeli forces, who it said killed 86 members of the press, more than 60% of whom were Palestinians reporting from Gaza, according to French news agency AFP.
The Israeli military has denied ever deliberately targeting journalists.
Ukraine and Sudan, two other countries embroiled in conflicts, also saw an increase in the number of journalists killed compared with the previous year, the report said.
The report said the number of journalists killed by drones was rising.
The 39 cases it documented included 28 killings by Israel in Gaza, five by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan and four by Russian military drones in Ukraine.
Lack of Transparent Investigations in Journalist Deaths
In Mexico, six journalists were killed in 2025, with no perpetrators found to date.
Bangladesh, India and Peru all saw deaths related to crime being investigated by the journalists.
The CPJ noted that investigations into such killings were often lacking in transparency.
In Saudi Arabia, prominent columnist Turki al-Jasser was executed by the state, with the CPJ likening the charges against him to "spurious national security and financial crime allegations" used to punish reporters.
Al-Jasser's death was the first documented killing of a journalist by Saudi Arabia since Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in 2018.
On its website, the CPJ also notes that 329 journalists remained imprisoned as of December 1, 2025, while another 84 were missing as of that date.
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