Israel responsible for two-thirds of media worker deaths by 2025: CPJ | The Express Stand

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented a record number of fatalities for the second consecutive year, largely due to Israel’s continued 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 journalists covering the war from the war-torn enclave, where U.N. experts and human rights groups have described the scale and pattern of violence as amounting to genocide.

According to the report, more than three-quarters of journalists killed in conflict zones last year died. In Ukraine there were four deaths and in Sudan nine, only slightly more than in 2024. Gaza, on the other hand, still suffered much heavier losses, with Israel responsible for the majority. Since the group began tracking targeted killings of media workers three decades ago, the Israeli army has been responsible for more such deaths than any other state army.

In its twelve-page report, the CPJ also identifies dangers outside war zones. India, often described as the world’s largest democracy, loses at least one journalist every year to work-related killings, a pattern also seen in Mexico over the past decade, according to the press freedom group.

At least six journalists were murdered in Mexico last year, up from five in 2024 and two in 2023. All six remain unsolved, according to CPJ, continuing a long-standing pattern in which journalist killers go undiscovered and unprosecuted due to powerful criminal influence over police and political activities, and widespread corruption. For the past five years, at least one journalist has been murdered every year in Bangladesh and Colombia – and also by Israel.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also figure in the grim tally of press deaths worldwide. Both countries suffer from a weak rule of law, which allows criminal groups to operate with impunity and political leaders to exercise unchecked power, the advocacy group warned.

In countries with weaker democracies, journalists have been brutally targeted for their reporting on corruption and organized crime. In 2025, both Bangladesh and India saw reporters meet a tragic and mysterious end. Bangladeshi journalist Asaduzzaman Tuhin, CPJ reports, was chased and hacked to death by armed assailants in a murder orchestrated by a fraud gang, according to police.

Tuhin’s employer, the Bangla-language daily Protidiner Kagoj, said the attack came after he filmed several armed men attacking 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 its investigation into alleged corruption in a 1.2 billion rupee ($12 million) road project.

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 led to an arrest.

Drone killings

In its report, CPJ found a sharp increase in deaths of journalists from drones, unmanned aircraft and other remotely piloted devices in 2025. The number of killings of press members attributed to such attacks rose from just two in 2023 – the first year CPJ documented drone-related deaths – to 39 last year. Military drones were confirmed or believed to be responsible for 33 of these fatalities, the advocacy group said.

Of the drone deaths in 2025, 28 were struck by the Israeli army 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 attack in Iraq. Over the past three years, CPJ records a total of 62 journalists killed in drone strikes, with Israel responsible for three-quarters of those deaths between 2023 and 2025.

Paying for the truth

Journalists, CPJ notes, are particularly vulnerable in countries where conflict persists, corrupt politics prevail and authoritarian regimes weaken the rule of law.

The report adds that declines in press freedom – including the closure of independent media, censorship and physical attacks on the media, including killings – often serve as early indicators of democratic erosion.

Globally, the press watchdog notes, the continued failure to hold perpetrators to account continues to embolden those who kill journalists, allowing them to evade justice year after year.

Silenced by slander

The media advocacy group warns of a growing pattern of using unsubstantiated allegations of criminal activity to justify attacks on the press. This trend is reflected both in the large number of journalists detained for their work and in the reasons given for their killings.

Israel, CPJ notes, has repeatedly killed journalists it later — or in some cases preemptively — claimed were militants, without providing credible evidence. The most notable example of this, according to the advocacy group, is the targeting of Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, who had publicly warned that his life was in danger after repeated, unverified smears by Israeli authorities.

To date, the press freedom group said in its report that no one has been held responsible for any targeted killing of a journalist by Israel since October 7, 2023, or in the preceding 22 years.

Call for protection

The continued failure of government leaders to protect the press or hold attackers accountable, the New York-based group warned, is laying the groundwork for further killings — even in countries not at war. Media practitioners, the report notes, were murdered in 2025 in Mexico, India and the Philippines, all countries that have consistently failed to achieve justice for the killings of journalists.

In its report, CPJ called for radical reforms in the way governments investigate the killings of journalists, including the creation of an international investigative task force and the imposition of targeted sanctions.

“The increase in killings of journalists is symptomatic of a broader decline in press freedom and the safety of journalists worldwide,” the group warned, adding that a near-record number of media workers were jailed in 2025 amid smear campaigns and legal abuses aimed at criminalizing reporting.

CPJ also reports a growing wave of online harassment and physical attacks on journalists, driven by increasingly hostile rhetoric toward the press — even in countries that claim democratic credentials.