Press Freedom in the 21st Century

On January 17, 2016, I was released from Evin Prison in Iran, where I had been detained for 544 days simply because I was a journalist for The Washington Post.

It was a long and arduous ordeal for my family, friends, and colleagues—and for me. My return to freedom ended one of the longest-ever imprisonments of an American journalist.

My experience forever changed how news organizations perceive and respond to threats against their reporters. It also foreshadowed a disturbing new era of attacks on press freedom around the world, as the very notion of the rule of law was weaponized to silence journalists. In the decade since my release, it has become commonplace for authoritarian governments to detain reporters on spurious charges of espionage and other national security crimes.

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Read the stories of other civilians detained by governments.

As I reflect now on the moment of my release, I can still conjure the profound mix of relief I felt at regaining my freedom, as well as the deep sense of loss for all that I was leaving behind. I had chosen to dedicate years of my life to understanding Iran so that I could then explain it to the readers of The Washington Post. It was not a job but a vocation.

At its core, that is what journalism is meant to do, and that pursuit of the truth is increasingly what makes it among the professions that authoritarian leaders fear most.

While this anniversary marks a happy moment in my own life, there is no denying that the torrent of threats against journalists continues—including in countries that had once tolerated, if not respected, an independent press. For the first time in the history of the World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, more than half the world’s countries (93 of 180) have press freedom scores of “difficult” or “very serious,” as of 2026. Only seven countries (Norway, Netherlands, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Ireland) have a freedom of the press status rating of “good.”

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Continuing and shocking threats

When I returned to reporting at The Washington Post in 2018 after a nearly four-year absence, these new threats to press freedom were just beginning to become clear. The scope and variety was stunning. Consider:

• A car bomb was used to assassinate Daphne Caruana Galizia, a fearless Maltese reporter whose investigation into corruption of officials in her homeland was integral to the Panama Papers.
• In Myanmar (Burma), Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were imprisoned and tried on charges of violating the country’s arcane and obscure Official Secrets Act for their investigation of a mass grave of Rohingya Muslim men who had been massacred by security forces. Sentenced to seven years, they were ultimately pardoned in large part because of international outcry, but not before spending 511 days in prison.

And sometimes the grim reality struck very close to home:

• In August 2012 Austin Tice, a freelance contributor to The Washington Post, was abducted and detained in Syria. Efforts to find and free him continue.
• In October 2018 my Washington Post Global Opinions colleague Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was brutally murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. U.S. intelligence determined that the murder was authorized by Mohammed.
• Washington Post contributing columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested in Russia for his outspoken critiques of Vladimir Putin and the war on Ukraine. He spent more than two years in prison, continuing to publish from detention, and was ultimately released in a historic prisoner swap in 2024.
• In New York City, law enforcement has foiled multiple plots by Iranian intelligence operatives to kidnap or murder Masih Alinejad, a regular contributor to The Washington Post who is originally from Iran and is now based in the U.S.
• In 2026, my Washington Post colleague Hannah Natanson had her home searched and computers seized by the FBI as part of an investigation into leaked classified government documents. While neither she nor The Post was the subject of the investigation, such a search in these types of cases is very rare. (Also in 2026, The Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the work done by Natanson and others.)
• Rana Ayyub, a columnist critical of the Indian government of Narendra Modi, has faced relentless cyberattacks, threats of sexual violence, and frivolous lawsuits designed to silence her.
• In 2026, during the immigration enforcement raids in Minnesota former CNN anchor Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, a freelance journalist in Minneapolis, were arrested by federal agents in connection with an anti-immigration protest at a church. Fort and Lemon said they were covering the event as journalists.

• In July 2026, five New York Times journalists were served subpoenas by the Justice Department, seeking to compel their testimony before on a grand jury related to an article The Times published about safety concerns surrounding Pres. Donald Trump’s Qatari-donated Air Force One. In some cases, the subpoenas were served at the journalists’ residences, a highly unusual departure from the standard practice of subpoenaing the publication and not the individual journalists. The Justice Department said it was not targeting the journalists but those who had leaked information to the journalists. Regardless, journalists have been known to go to jail rather than reveal the identity of their sources.

• In September 2026, Trump banned journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House because of what he said were “purposely negative stories.” The action, which came more than a year after Trump banned journalists from the Associated Press from the White House because of the news organization’s decision to continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by its official name after Trump renamed it the Gulf of America. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth closed the Pentagon workspace used for years by journalists in March of 2026. In response to the ban, the three news organizations filed suit in federal court saying that the president’s actions were unconstitutional. In solidarity, other broadcast news organizations – ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC -- said they would not provide video coverage of Trump’s daily activities as part of what is referred to as “pool coverage.”

In many of these cases, officials accuse the journalists of spreading “fake news,” which has become a shorthand slur used against anyone doing reporting critical of those in power. But practicing the craft of journalism must not be criminalized, and that is why, when The Wall Street Journal’s Russia correspondent Evan Gershkovich was arrested in 2023, I knew I had to speak out.

Journalists and journalism are far from perfect: We need to constantly interrogate the stories we are telling to make sure that news organizations are doing their best to, in the words of Eugene Meyer, “tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.” But whatever the failings of journalism, press freedom cannot be a partisan issue. It must be a value that journalists live by and citizens cherish.

Spread of misinformation and disinformation

It is hard to separate the decline in press freedom from the erosion of public trust in the news media.

Yet there is a yearslong trend of trust in news eroding. It is in part a self-inflicted wound. When a political leader, or anyone for that matter, is the main subject of news coverage—whether by controlling their domestic media or independent media choosing to shine a continual spotlight on an individual or group—their perspective inevitably becomes the dominant narrative.

The U.S. is the global leader in most matters and usually ahead of other countries, but in matters of press freedom we could have learned from the experiences of media in authoritarian states or once reliably democratic ones, yet we have failed to do so. Countries such as Hungary and Turkey—now among those with endangered press freedom—were once places where free media reigned. (In the 2026 Press Freedom Index, the United States fell to 64th place from 57th in 2025; both Hungary and Turkey also fell in the rankings.)

Another ominous trend is the growing legal threats against the owners and publishers of news outlets, sometimes termed lawfare.

Maria Ressa, the cofounder and CEO of Rappler, a groundbreaking digital news company in the Philippines, has been forced to defend herself in numerous frivolous lawsuits designed to exhaust her resolve and resources. Despite the very real possibility of long-term imprisonment, Ressa has continued to fight—and publish—every day. Her commitment to press freedom earned her a Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

In Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, the billionaire publisher of the pro-democracy Apple Daily, has languished in prison since 2020. In February 2026, the Chinese government imposed a 20-year sentence, the harshest to date under Beijing’s crackdown. The term is in essence, a death sentence. Now 78 years old and in failing health, his global advocates have thus far been unable to convince Chinese authorities to release him, even on humanitarian grounds. The message from Beijing and other repressive governments seems clear: No matter how powerful you are, if you dare to criticize our rule we can and will silence you.

Examples of brave journalism

Yet brave people around the world continue to commit to this vital work. I recommend Writing with Fire (2021), an Academy Award-nominated documentary about a newsroom composed of women who belong to India’s Dalit caste, the lowest social group in the country who have been subjected to repression and marginalization for centuries. Their need to express the truth of their communities and the abuses of power perpetrated by wealthy landowners and corrupt police outweighed their fear of standing up.

But that bravery comes at a heavy price. In India, long considered the world’s largest democracy and home to more daily newspaper readers than the entire population of the United States, dozens of journalists have been targeted and killed for their work in recent years. Almost all of those crimes have gone unprosecuted.

No community of journalists, though, has been more systematically targeted with deadly force than those in Gaza. Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in May 2022 by the Israel Defense Forces. Subsequent investigations of open-source video by Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other news outlets determined that Abu Akleh was shot despite clearly visible representation that she was a journalist.

Not all threats to a free press involve physical attacks on journalists. Another insidious example is the practice of entire nations driving journalists out of their countries. This is happening in Russia, China, and Iran, as well as other places. Without the independent voices of journalists, the citizens of those countries, and ultimately the citizens of the world, will be left to take the word of authoritarian regimes. Those journalistic voices cannot be taken for granted, because they are the voices of the citizenry—asking questions, insisting on answers, and ultimately shining light on the darkest corners of the world.

Equipping these exiled journalists with tools and standards to contribute to international news-gathering operations may provide an answer to the news industry’s long-term viability at a moment when trust is waning.

The community of press freedom organizations is effectively documenting and sounding an alarm about the growing threats to journalists in countries around the world. Recognizing and naming the problem was a critical step, but this has not led to credible solutions. In fact the situation is deteriorating in most of the world.

Protecting press freedom cannot be the sole responsibility of journalists and their organizations.