How free is the global press?
Hi, this is Veronika from the communications team, and today we’ll be talking about press freedom, what it is, and how it’s changing.
Two events reignited my interest in media freedom this week: the election results in Hungary, where media might get a chance to breathe again after 16 years of authoritarian rule, and the current debate about changes to funding of the public television and radio broadcasters in my home country, sometimes compared to the early days of Viktor Orban’s rule in Hungary or Robert Fico’s in Slovakia.
So I decided to do my homework and use this Weekly Chart as a refresher on media freedom for anyone interested. First of all, what is media freedom, and how is it measured?
Press freedom is defined as the ability of journalists as individuals and collectives to select, produce, and disseminate news in the public interest independent of political, economic, legal, and social interference and in the absence of threats to their physical and mental safety. Reporters Without Borders
The above definition is a good reminder that media freedom is about much more than allowing media to exist. It is about making sure that journalists can do their work safely and in reasonable conditions.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an NGO working to protect journalists and press freedom worldwide, has been measuring just that with its annual World Press Freedom Index since 2002.
As you may have guessed, press freedom isn’t improving. Despite wider and easier access to boundless information, at the tap of our fingers, the world has not become safer or kinder to journalists. In the past thirteen years, the percentage of countries in the lowest category, where the situation of press freedom is rated as “very serious”, has more than doubled.
More nuanced measurement
In the first ten years of the index, RSF shared only one overall score of media freedom per country each year. In 2022, they added more nuance with five “contextual indicators” that seem to better reflect the complexity of the concept: political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and safety.
The big news of the latest update? The overall global score dipped into the “difficult” category for the first time. With each indicator contributing equally to the overall score, here’s how each of them changed in the past three years:
While RSF, in its report, pointed out the record-low economic score as the main takeaway, what stood out to me was the 10-point drop in political context, the largest difference of the five indicators. That one feels particularly worrying, considering the undeniable impacts of political oppression on media freedom and its ripple effects on other indicators.
Global decline and a few exceptions
Between 2022 and 2025, press freedom declined in 118 of 178, or two thirds, of countries measured. Since these scores have been recorded using a consistent methodology, they indicate a concerning global shift.
While the extremes, with Norway on one end and North Korea on the other, aren't too surprising, a closer look at each region can reveal a few surprises — Bhutan was a shock to me and a fascinating story.
And my personal takeaways? Czechia, my home country, has enjoyed an unusually high level of press freedom, a luxury that's easy to take for granted. Slovakia, our neighbor, lags behind by a full 12 points, and its situation has gotten worse since 2022. Hungary falls even lower on the press freedom scale, and to my surprise, shares the "problematic" category with the United States.
As for the proposed changes in Czechia, it will take a while for them to kick in and much longer to be reflected in measures like the World Press Freedom Index. Still, harsh funding cuts and a greater dependence on the state budget don’t suggest a bright future — they are, however, very much in line with global trends.
Thank you for reading! I hope you learned something new, and don't forget to support your favorite independent media. Next week, we'll be back with another Weekly Chart from my colleague Alicia.
