ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A new report released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) —  an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide — reveals that a record 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025, more than in any other year since the CPJ began collecting data in 1992.

It marked the second year in a row that global press fatalities broke records, with Israeli military actions accounting for roughly two-thirds of all deaths. According to the report, no other government's military in recorded history has killed more journalists in a deliberate manner than Israel's, with most of the victims being Palestinian reporters and media workers operating in Gaza.

“Journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg in a statement. “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. We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news.”

According to the report, over three-quarters of all press deaths in 2025 were in conflict settings. CPJ notes that killings in Ukraine and Sudan increased slightly in 2025 compared to the previous year, reaching four and nine deaths in each country, respectively, but adds that those figures remained “very low compared to Israel, which remains a significant exception.”

The report also highlights “an uptick in the use of drones to kill the press,” with 39 cases documented, including 28 killings by Israel’s military in Gaza, five by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, and one by a suspected Turkish strike in Iraq.

The report attributes the rising global death toll among journalists to “a persistent culture of impunity.” In 2025, researchers documented 47 cases of targeted killings — the highest number of journalists deliberately killed for their work in the past decade — yet noted that “very few transparent investigations have been conducted” and “no one has been held accountable in any of the cases.”

The organization further contends that “the continued failure of government leaders to protect the press or hold their attackers to account lays the groundwork for more killings,” even in nations not at war.

Fatalities were recorded in Mexico, India, and the Philippines, countries described as having “persistently failed to secure justice for journalists’ murders.” To combat this, the group is advocating for “radical reform” in investigative processes, including the creation of an international investigative task force and the use of targeted sanctions against perpetrators.

Another study from the journalistic watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released late last December revealed that Israel ranks second worldwide in the number of foreign journalists it imprisons.

According to the RSF report, as of 1 December 2025, 20 Palestinian reporters were being held in Israeli jails, 16 of them arrested over the past two years in Gaza and the West Bank. At the same time, Israeli forces are responsible for more than 43 percent of all attacks on media workers documented last year.

Since October 2023, Israeli military operations have killed roughly 220 journalists, with at least 65 of them targeted because of their work or killed while they were reporting.

The report also positioned Iraq as the country with the third-highest number of missing journalists in the world amid an overall unfavorable situation in the country for press freedom.

"Many journalists have been killed by armed groups in recent years, by both jihadist organizations and militias. Such killings rarely lead to investigations, and those responsible go unpunished," the NGO's Iraq summary asserted.

Since 2003, 475 journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq, with perpetrators held accountable in only two or three cases, according to the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights (IOHR).