'Two-thirds of journalists killed by Israel in 2025'

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented a second consecutive year of record fatalities, driven largely by Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza and what it calls an unprecedented campaign against the press.

The New York-based media freedom watchdog says more than 60% of the 86 journalists killed by Israeli fire in 2025 were Palestinian reporters covering the war from inside the enclave, where UN experts and human rights organisations have described the scale and pattern of violence as amounting to genocide.

According to the report, more than three-quarters of journalists killed last year died in conflict zones. Ukraine saw four deaths and Sudan nine, only slightly higher than in 2024. Gaza, by contrast, still bore far heavier losses. Since the group began tracking targeted killings of media workers three decades ago, the Israel Defense Forces have been responsible for more such deaths than any other state military.

In its 12-page report, the CPJ also flags dangers outside war zones. According to the press freedom group, India, often described as the world's largest democracy, loses at least one journalist to work-related killings each year, a pattern mirrored in Mexico over the past decade. At least one journalist has been killed in Bangladesh and Colombia, as well as by Israel, every year for the past five years.

In countries with flawed democracies, journalists have been brutally targeted for reporting on corruption and organized crime. In 2025, both Bangladesh and India saw reporters meet violent and still-unexplained deaths. Bangladeshi journalist Asaduzzaman Tuhin, CPJ reports, was chased and hacked to death by armed assailants in a killing police said was orchestrated by a fraud ring. Tuhin's employer, the Bangla-language daily Protidiner Kagoj, said the attack came after he filmed several armed men assaulting a man in a public dispute. In India, the mutilated body of freelance journalist Mukesh Chandrakar was found in a septic tank weeks after NDTV aired his investigation into alleged corruption in a 1.2 billion rupee (US$12 million) road project.

CPJ's grim annual tally also names Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Both countries, the advocacy group cautioned, suffer from weak rule of law, allowing criminal factions to operate with impunity and political leaders to exercise unchecked power. Similarly, in the Philippines, which also has a long history of violence against journalists, three journalists were shot dead, including veteran publisher Juan Dayang. So far, only one case has resulted in an arrest.

Drone killings

In its report, the CPJ noted a sharp rise in journalist deaths caused by drones and other remotely controlled devices. Of those killed by drones last year, 28 were struck by Israel's military in Gaza, five by Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, four by Russia in Ukraine, one by Houthi forces in Yemen, and one by a suspected Turkish strike in Iraq.

Silenced by smear

The media advocacy group warns of a growing pattern in which unsubstantiated allegations of criminal activity are used to justify attacks on the press. Israel, the CPJ notes, has repeatedly killed journalists whom it later—or in some cases preemptively—claimed were militants, without providing credible evidence. To date, the press freedom group states in its report that no one has been held accountable for any targeted killing of a journalist by Israel since October 7, 2023, or in the preceding 22 years.

The continued failure of government leaders to protect the press or hold attackers accountable, the New York–based group cautioned, lays the groundwork for further killings—even in countries that are not at war. Media practitioners, it notes, were killed in Mexico, India, and the Philippines in 2025, all nations that have failed to secure justice for journalists' murders.