“2025 was too dark for the communities that have been traditionally marginalised or excluded by much of the media, particularly after the US Government scrapped the diversity, equity and inclusive (DEI) principles from its orbit.” – Media Diversity Institute (MDI) Executive Director Milica Pesic.
2025 will be remembered for the significant rollback on DEI policies and initiatives in the US, which were quickly adopted by nations and companies across the globe, as well as escalating attacks on press freedom. It was a year that increased pressure on a media already under strain, impacting diversity and inclusion.
Will anything stop the decline in 2026?
Press freedom under attack in the US
Press freedom in the US has been closely monitored since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Andrew Gawthorpe, an expert on US politics and foreign policy at Leiden University in The Netherlands, wrote an article for MDI in April examining the first months of the new presidency and the impact of government actions on free speech and the media. “Hopefully, U.S. media is big, diverse, and rich enough to withstand the onslaught. If it is not, the country will be one step closer to autocracy.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned in April that executive orders in the first 100 days of the Trump administration had the potential to curtail media freedoms.
Some of the actions that raised concerns include the banning of Associated Press from the White House press corps, new rules on media covering the Pentagon which led to most news journalists handing in their press passes, and legal action against media organisations.
In the latest legal action, President Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC in connection with the editing of a speech he gave on the 6th of January 2021. In November, the BBC apologised for the editing which was in a Panorama episode broadcast in 2024. The public broadcaster says it will defend itself against the lawsuit.
President Trump has also sued The Wall Street Journal (pending), The New York Times (pending), CNN (dismissed by a judge), ABC (settled), and CBS (settled).
The CPJ called on the president to “stop engaging the media in lawsuits that appear to challenge the fundamentals of the First Amendment”.
The ability of reporters in America to do their jobs is also a growing concern, with the US Press Freedom Tracker documenting over 150 assaults of journalists during protests. More than 30 journalists were arrested while covering protests or government meetings in 2025. Nearly 90 per cent of those arrests and detentions occurred while covering demonstrations on the issue of immigration.
Censorship
On 23 December, five prominent Europeans were barred from the United States, with authorities claiming they are involved in online censorship of Americans.
In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the five individuals have led organised efforts to “coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose”.
“These radical activists and weaponised NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.”
The five targeted include:
- Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the US-based Centre for Countering Digital Hate
- Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index
- Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid
- French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton who played a key role in the creation of the Digital Services Act
Imran Ahmed filed a complaint in the Southern District of New York against several Secretaries of State and other officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi, to prevent their unconstitutional attempt to arrest and expel him from the country. “Simply put, immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation—may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavoured by the current administration.”
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from detaining or deporting Ahmed, who is a permanent US resident.
The ban has been condemned by the European Union, France and Germany. French President Emmanual Macron wrote on X that the measures “amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty”.
Germany’s justice ministry said the visa bans were unacceptable and the two German campaigners had the government’s “support and solidarity”.
Mika Beuster, Chairman of the German Journalists’ Association, said in a statement: “This is censorship in its purest form, the likes of which we have previously only known from autocratic regimes. The Trump administration is using brute force to protect American Big Tech companies from European laws.”
Global concerns
Elsewhere across the globe, the introduction of laws to tackle hate speech and protect people online have raised alarms that free speech is under threat.
In late December, Korea’s ruling Democratic Party government passed a law against “fake news” which critics warned could weakened the media’s ability to hold officials to account. The revised Information and Communications Network Act allows punitive damages against traditional news and internet media for publishing “false or fabricated information.
Around the same time, the International Federation of Journalists expressed concern over Mongolia, saying the country’s press freedom is at a crossroads with journalists facing a surge in criminal defamation cases, state-led raids and concentrated political ownership of newsrooms.
In Africa, Reporters Without Borders called for safeguards for journalistic freedom in Guinea-Bissau after a military coup in November. Weeks after the coup, a transitional charter was issued calling on media outlets to cooperate to “avoid disseminating information and messages inciting violence and civil disobedience, on pain of immediate closure”. Media leaders say it is a call for “self-censorship” and fear the kind of news control that has hampered independent and critical reporting in nearby Sahel countries, including Mali and Burkina Faso.
Press Freedom in decline
Several trackers and Indexes are marking the decline in press freedom, warning that it is now at low and dangerous levels.
UNESCO’s 2022/2025 World Trends Report, Journalism: Shaping a World at Peace, released in December, found a historic 10 per cent decline in freedom of expression globally between 2012 and 2024.
It examined global shifts through two critical lenses: information as a public good and information integrity. “The findings reveal that these values are under unprecedented pressure.” It also found the governments intensified attempts to control and restrict media by 48 per cent in 12 years.
The report says: “The recent decline in freedom of expression represents a historically significant and unprecedented shift. Comparable contractions have occurred only during extraordinary periods, including World War I, the rise of authoritarianism until the end of World War II, and 1963-1973, coinciding with the Cold War.”
Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2025 classified the state of press freedom as a “difficult situation” for the first time.
IDEA’s The Global State of Democracy 2025: Democracy on the Move registered a decline in press freedom in a quarter of the 173 countries it covers. That marks the most far-reaching decline in 50 years.
Outlook for the media and diversity
If the trends of 2025 – growing authoritarianism, a disregard for the rule of law, the abandonment of diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and technological changes and challenges to the media and information sectors – continue throughout the new year, freedom of the press could decline even further. The impact on diversity and inclusion is already reshaping newsrooms and the ability to report.
As Angelo Boccato wrote for MDI in November, Black journalists in the US are facing new challenges to get stories on their communities published in the mainstream media, making the existence of Black media even more crucial.
“It is frightening to see that AI is as exclusive, misogynistic, racist, and homophobic as humans behind it, and as much as humans who make decisions on state levels. What is democracy about if minorities are silenced? What is press freedom about if only the powerful are enjoying it? We cannot afford to continue this darkness,” said Pesic.
While Indexes track the health of the media, including press freedom and attacks on reporters, the role of MDI’s Media Diversity Index will become even more vital. By uniquely focusing on diversity and inclusion, the Index, which is expanding to Latin America, is an important tool for activists and the media who are advocating for change.
In a call to action to halt the decline of press freedom and challenge threats to diversity in the media, Pesic said: “This year should be about joining forces and fighting for inclusion on all fronts, whether we talk about press freedom, media funding, offline or online content development. If we do not do it this year, next year will be too late.”
