RSF Releases 2025 World Press Freedom Index
At a time when press freedom is experiencing a worrying decline in many parts of the world, a major — yet often underestimated — factor is seriously weakening the media: economic pressure. Much of this is due to ownership concentration, pressure from advertisers and financial backers, and public aid that is restricted, absent or allocated in an opaque manner. The data measured by the RSF Index's economic indicator clearly shows that today's news media are caught between preserving their editorial independence and ensuring their economic survival.
'Guaranteeing freedom, independence and plurality in today's media landscape requires stable and transparent financial conditions. Without economic independence, there can be no free press. When news media are financially strained, they are drawn into a race to attract audiences at the expense of quality reporting, and can fall prey to the oligarchs and public authorities who seek to exploit them."
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Of the five main indicators that determine the World Press Freedom Index, the indicator measuring the financial conditions of journalism and economic pressure on the industry dragged down the world's overall score in 2025.
The economic indicator in the 2025 RSF World Press Freedom Index is at its lowest point in history, and the global situation is now considered 'difficult.'
The ongoing wave of media shutdowns
According to data collected by RSF for the 2025 Index, in 160 out of the 180 countries assessed, media outlets achieve financial stability 'with difficulty' — or 'not at all.'
Worse, news outlets are shutting down due to economic hardship in nearly a third of countries globally. This is the case in the United States (57th, down 2 places) Tunisia (129th, down 11 places) and Argentina (87th, down 21 places).
The situation in Palestine (163rd) is disastrous. In Gaza, the Israeli army has destroyed newsrooms, killed nearly 200 journalists and imposed a total blockade on the strip for over 18 months. In Haiti (112th, down 18 places), the lack of political stability has also plunged the media economy into chaos.
The United States: leader of the economic depression
In the United States, where the economic indicator has dropped by more than 14 points in two years, vast regions are turning into news deserts. Local journalism is bearing the brunt of the economic downturn: more than 60% of journalists and media experts surveyed by RSF in Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania agree that it is 'difficult to earn a living wage as a journalist,' and 75% believe that 'the average media outlet struggles for economic viability.' The country's 28-place drop in the social indicator reveals that the press operates in an increasingly hostile environment.
President Donald Trump's second term has already intensified this trend as false economic pretexts are used to bring the press into line. This led to the abrupt end to funding for the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which affected several newsrooms — including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — and, as a result, over 400 million citizens worldwide were suddenly deprived of access to reliable information. Similarly, the freeze on funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) halted US international aid, throwing hundreds of news outlets into a critical state of economic instability and forcing some to shut down — particularly in Ukraine (62nd).
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The Spinoff
an hour ago
- The Spinoff
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NZ Herald
14 hours ago
- NZ Herald
With arson and land grabs, Israeli settler attacks in West Bank hit record high
'Before the war, they harassed us, but not like this,' said Muhammad Sabr Asalaya, 56, the junkyard owner. 'Now they're trying to expel as many people as they can and annex as much land as they can.' Such attacks were on the rise before Hamas led a deadly raid on Israel in 2023, setting off the war in Gaza, and they have since become the new normal across much of the West Bank. With the world's attention on Gaza, extremist settlers in the West Bank are carrying out one of the most violent and effective campaigns of intimidation and land-grabbing since Israel occupied the territory during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Settlers have carried out more than 750 attacks on Palestinians and their property during the first half of this year, an average of nearly 130 assaults a month, according to records compiled by the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Muhammad Sabr Asalaya, who owns a junkyard in Burqa, West Bank. 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Mainstream settler leaders say they have a right to the land but oppose attacking Palestinians. Ariel Danino, left, a prominent settler activist, at a spot overlooking Burin, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, in February, 2023. 'We're talking about a war over the land, and this is what is done during times of war,' he said of settler activity then. Photo / Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, The New York Times Hardline settler leaders acknowledge that their aim is to intimidate Palestinians into leaving strategic tracts of territory that many Palestinians hope may one day form the spine of a state. 'It's not the nicest thing to evacuate a population,' Ariel Danino, a prominent settler activist, said in an interview with the New York Times in 2023. 'But we're talking about a war over the land, and this is what is done during times of war.' In a recent call, Danino said he stood by the comments but declined a second interview. For several years, the settlers had focused their intimidation on tiny, semi-nomadic herding communities along a remote chain of hilltops northeast of Ramallah, the main Palestinian city in the West Bank. That campaign has largely succeeded, forcing at least 38 communities to leave their hamlets and encampments since 2023, according to records compiled by B'Tselem, an Israeli rights group. That has eroded the Palestinian presence there and ceded the surrounding slopes to settlers, who have seized the chance to build more small settlement outposts, or encampments. After members of one Palestinian community fled en masse in May, a settler leader, Elisha Yered, wrote on social media that their departure was 'thanks to the campaign waged against it by the Jewish settlement outposts in the area'. 'With God's help, one day we will expel you to your natural place in Iraq and Saudi Arabia,' Yered added. Since the start of 2023, settlers have built more than 130 outposts, mostly in rural areas of the West Bank, that are technically unauthorised but often tolerated by the Israeli Government. That is more than they had built in the previous two decades combined, according to research by Peace Now, an Israeli group that backs the creation of a Palestinian state. The remains of the burned car of Abdallah Abbas, a retired teacher, in the village of Beitin in the West Bank, last month. Photo / Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times Now settlers have expanded their scope. They are increasingly targeting a cluster of wealthier, larger and better connected Palestinian villages closer to Ramallah — villages like Burqa and its neighbour, Beitin. Before the junkyard attack in Burqa, masked settlers had, in fact, begun to rampage in Beitin. Just after 1am, Abdallah Abbas, a retired teacher in that village, woke to find his sedan on fire and a Star of David sprayed on the wall of his garden. Roughly an hour later, security footage showed, two masked arsonists stole into the yard of Leila Jaraba's house, a few hundred metres away on the edge of the village. One sprayed the hood of Jaraba's car with something flammable, and his accomplice set the car on fire. 'We knew our turn would come,' said Jaraba, 28, who was cowering inside with her husband and two sons, aged 2 and 4 months. 'They want to take this land; they want to kick us out.' About an hour later, masked settlers entered Burqa and attacked Sabr Asalaya's junkyard. Villagers said in interviews that they suspected the same group of settlers might have moved from place to place, wreaking havoc. This sequence of attacks was just a snapshot of a broader pattern of violence in the area. In the first half of 2025, there were an average of 17 attacks a month in this about 100sqkm area, according to the UN. That was nearly twice the monthly rate in 2024 and roughly five times as many as in 2022. The attacks have occurred against the backdrop of intensifying efforts by the Israeli Government, which is partly led by longtime settler activists, to entrench its grip on the West Bank. Since entering office in late 2022, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have authorised more than 30 settlements, some of which were previously built without government permission and have been granted retroactive authorisation. It is the largest wave of government-led settlement activity since before the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. Simultaneously, the Israeli military has captured and demolished key urban neighbourhoods in the northern West Bank that are technically administered by the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous institution that oversees civil governance in Palestinian cities. The military has also installed hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints across the territory. The Israeli military defends its actions as a means of containing Palestinian militant groups that launch terrorist attacks on Israelis. But it has further complicated the lives of most Palestinians in the West Bank, stifled the economy, left tens of thousands of people homeless and made it even harder for most Palestinians to journey to nearby cities. A graffiti including a drawing of the Star of David painted on the garden wall of Abdallah Abbas, a retired teacher, in the village of Beitin in the West Bank. Photo / Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times In villages like Burqa, settlers' attacks make life especially untenable. Repeated arson attacks have damaged scores of used cars that Sabr Asalaya, the junkyard owner, said he had bought from dealers in Israel. He planned to retool their engines and spare parts and sell them for a profit. The attacks have lost him stock worth tens of thousands of dollars, making his business — and his ability to survive in this village — much less viable, he said. Life is 'not slowly turning untenable; it is already untenable', Sabr Asalaya said. 'We are encircled. We can't even herd our cattle. We're locked in.' The problem has been made worse by the Israeli military's failure to prevent either the attacks or the settlers' construction of unauthorised encampments across the territory. A New York Times investigation last year found that Israeli authorities had for decades shown substantial leniency to Jews involved in terrorist attacks against Arabs, a dynamic that has only worsened since October 2023. In one emblematic case, a settler was filmed shooting a Palestinian in the presence of an Israeli soldier, yet the shooter was questioned for only 20 minutes and never arrested. A senior Israeli military commander in the central West Bank, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said his soldiers tried to protect settlers and Palestinians in accordance with Israeli law. He noted that settlers had sometimes clashed with Israeli soldiers this summer. We spoke to the commander eight hours before the attacks on Sabr Asalaya's property and Jaraba's car. Soldiers arrived long after the fires had been extinguished, villagers said. While Israeli police said they had opened investigations into each episode, no one was prosecuted. 'In some cases, suspects were arrested,' the police said in a statement, 'though later released due to a lack of evidence'. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Patrick Kingsley, Fatima AbdulKarim and Natan Odenheimer Photographs by: Afif Amireh, Patrick Kingsley, Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
NZ Herald
a day ago
- NZ Herald
Israeli far-right minister backs contentious West Bank settlement plan
Israel's finance minister has backed plans to build 3400 homes in a particularly contentious area of the occupied West Bank, calling for the territory's annexation in response to several countries' plans to recognise a Palestinian state. In response, the United Nations chief warned that building Israeli homes in the area
