In November 2024, a canopy collapsed at a train station in Serbia, killing 16 people. The most likely cause of the shoddy work was corruption. Mass protests broke out, reported by independent journalists.
Some were then beaten by thugs while the police watched. Half were beaten by the police. In 2025, at least 91 physical attacks on journalists were recorded in Serbia, according to the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia. Attackers are rarely punished, which "encourages new crimes against journalists," says Jelena Petković, a local expert on media safety.
Serbia has all the outward signs of a democracy. It doesn't imprison journalists for what they write. Yet it makes their work and lives difficult in dozens of ways - unless they support the government.
KRIK, an investigative media outlet that often exposes corruption in Serbian government, has been hit with more than 30 lawsuits in the past few years, 17 of which are still active, says Stevan Dojčinović, the editor-in-chief. He has to spend up to five days a month in court. Regime media accuse him of working for the CIA and George Soros, the Jewish billionaire. Fake photos of him with the leader of a criminal group, as well as real intimate photos, have been circulated, with the aim of embarrassing him. "It left a huge, heavy mark," he says.
Meanwhile, all terrestrial broadcasters are state-controlled or owned by friends of right-wing populist President Aleksandar Vučić, and they say what he wants them to say. Zoran Kusovac, a media consultant, recounts how a friend of his divorced her husband, a TV editor, partly because she was fed up with Vučić’s late-night calls.
Around the world, press freedoms are in retreat. On an index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the global score has fallen since 2014 - from 67 out of 100 (the same as America today) - to below 55 in 2025 (as bad as Serbia). "For the first time in the history of the index, conditions for journalism are 'difficult' or 'very serious' in more than half of the world's countries, and satisfactory in fewer than one in four," RSF said. Others have found a similar trend. Data from V-Dem, a research project based in Sweden, suggests that the global average has deteriorated since 2004 from 0,66 (on a scale of 0 to 1) to 0,49 - roughly the difference between Mexico and today's India under Hindu nationalists.
No news that is "press worthy"
The biggest declines are occurring not in dictatorships, where serious journalism has long been virtually impossible, but in countries that still claim to be democratic. Authorities in such systems typically do not try to completely stifle criticism. Instead, they reshape the incentives for those who gather information so that ordinary people hear plenty of praise for the ruling party and only occasional, stingy notes of dissent. The goal is to keep the powerful in power and to reduce oversight over how they abuse that power.
An analysis by The Economist magazine found strong links between media suppression and corruption. Looking at 80 years of data from around 180 countries collected by V-Dem, it found that a decline in media freedom in a country was a strong predictor of a country’s subsequent decline in corruption. This held true even after controlling for past and current levels of corruption, changes in income, and global trends.
It's not just a case of bad things happening at the same time. The analysis is temporal: it tests whether a change in one variable reliably predicts a future change in another. In statistical jargon, this is called "Granger causality" - and quite a few such connections have been found.
Without incisive, investigative journalism, it is easier for officials to embezzle money without being seen, or to make deals "under the table" without resistance. The statistical relationship is significant: all else being equal, a country where press freedom declines from Canada to Indonesia is predicted to slide into corruption equivalent to Ireland turning into Latvia.
Fear and services
There also seems to be a feedback loop: rising corruption also bodes well for a less free media later on—perhaps because those in power, when they have a lot to hide, have an added incentive to silence inquisitive journalists. “If we report on corruption… our journalists get doxed,” says Wahyu Djatmika, director of the Indonesian weekly Tempo. One journalist was sent a severed pig’s head; others received dozens of unsolicited food deliveries—a reminder that the “big guys” they write about know exactly where to find them.
These feedback loops compound the damage, so the full cost of bad policies is felt only gradually. Institutions have inertia: the model suggests that, on average, it takes about four years after a media clampdown for at least half of the eventual increase in corruption to manifest itself. A leader can silence the media today, but voters may not notice the subsequent spike in fraud until after the next election.
Another pattern: As media freedoms decline, elites are less likely to offer reasoned explanations for their policies. And this, too, usually precedes an increase in corruption. This fits with the rise of populism around the world—a movement that relies more on emotion than reason. Populist leaders tend to seek to weaken institutional checks on their own power, including the media; and this opens the door to corruption and abuse.
In sum, the statistical analysis concludes that populist politics, corruption, and suppression of critical media not only go hand in hand, but are mutually reinforcing. Governments that suppress the press today will rule worse tomorrow.
Many countries are on this dangerous path. “The big change we’ve seen in recent years is that supposedly democratic countries are adopting many of the techniques we’ve traditionally seen in authoritarian regimes,” says Jody Ginsberg, head of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). These techniques don’t usually go as far as imprisoning or killing journalists. Instead, they tend to fall into three main categories: rhetorical, legal, and economic.
The rhetorical trick is to portray critical journalists as a threat to the nation. Autocratic regimes have long done this; now many elected leaders do it too. Vučić describes negative reporting as “pure terrorism.” Argentine President Javier Millay has been pushing the phrase: “We don’t hate journalists enough.” Supporters of India’s ruling party call critical reporters “presstitutes” (a portmanteau of the words “press” and “prostitutes”).
Donald Trump recently said it was "seditious, maybe even treasonous" for the New York Times to publish "false" reports to "slander and humiliate the President of the United States." He added: "They are the true enemies of the people, and we need to do something about it." The White House has been releasing a list of "media offenders," naming individual reporters it accuses of lying, professional misconduct, or "left-wing craziness."
Such unprecedented rhetoric from the US president is exacerbating an already hostile atmosphere for reporters. Americans' trust in the media is at an all-time low, according to Gallup. Only 8 percent of Republicans in America believe the media reports fairly or accurately, down from 33 percent in 2007, the year the iPhone was introduced, ushering in the era of "rage bait."
Trump's demonization of journalists undermines the taboo that other politicians should do the same, Ginsberg says. "Trump's textbook is being adopted by global leaders everywhere," agrees Thibaut Brutin, director of RSF.
Fighting rhetoric from the top can encourage digital mobs to harass reporters. Women journalists bear the brunt: a global UNESCO study found that 75 percent had experienced online harassment, and 42 percent had experienced in-person harassment or threats of violence. When victims were asked who instigated the harassment, the most common response – after anonymous perpetrators – was “political actors.”
In almost every democracy, freedom of expression is guaranteed by law. That should make it difficult for governments to use criminal law as a bludgeon against journalists. But they find workarounds. One is to use civil litigation. In recent years, Europe has seen a surge in malicious lawsuits by wealthy individuals, designed to financially crush hard-working journalists or cripple the media. A 2023 report cited more than 800 such cases, noting that they only “scratch the surface of… the problem.” Trump has embraced this tactic, suing ABC, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and others, sometimes seeking billions of dollars in damages.
Another tactic is to attack media outlets with laws that have nothing to do with journalism. In September, the Turkish government seized control of Can Holding, a conglomerate that includes TV stations, accusing it of tax evasion and money laundering. In Tanzania, where President Samia Suluhu Hassan took office in 2021 promising liberal reforms, journalists were arrested for “spying” while covering an apparently rigged election in October.
By accusing journalists of "ordinary" crimes, authorities can spread the idea that they are untrustworthy. They can also intimidate others into self-censorship. "What's always hard to measure are the stories that are never written, or the questions that are never asked because people are afraid," Ginzberg says.
Digital technology has changed the meaning of journalism: anyone with a phone can broadcast shocking footage to a global audience. Regimes with bad intentions rightly see this as a threat and are responding with broadly worded internet laws that can be weaponized against critics. Some ban the spread of “fake news,” which in some places means any claim that the government denies. A new law in Zambia criminalizes the “unauthorized disclosure” of “critical information,” defined as anything that “relates to public safety, public health, economic stability [or] national security.”
The Freedom House Index shows that internet freedom has been in decline for 15 years. It’s not just about autocrats shutting down the internet during protests (as in Iran in January) or elections (as in Uganda in the same month). In the past year, half of the 18 countries previously labeled digitally “free” (out of 72 rated) have become less free. Globally, the most consistent decline over the past 15 years has been in the measure of “whether governments or other powerful actors manipulate online sources of information.” Many use artificial intelligence to create fake pro-government stories on fake websites that look like mainstream media outlets.
The third category of pressure - economic - is particularly powerful because governments have a lot of money, while media outlets usually do not. In 160 of the 180 countries RSF surveyed, media outlets can achieve financial stability "with difficulty" or "not at all."
In Indonesia, the quality of journalism has declined in the last five or six years "mainly because of financial pressure," says Tempo's Djatmika. State advertising goes to media outlets that flatter themselves. Big private advertisers avoid critical media outlets, afraid of angering politicians. They "don't see Tempo as a safe brand because we do investigative journalism."
When donors or NGOs support independent media, the authorities pass "foreign agent" laws to restrict them - a trick perfected by Vladimir Putin. Another maneuver is to encourage "friendly" tycoons to buy up and tame critical media.
When several of these techniques are combined, the effect can be devastating. In India, the world’s largest democracy, journalists are, in theory, free to write whatever they want. But those who try to expose the abuses of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party face a barrage of discouragement. Abhinandan Sekri, the director of the Delhi-based digital media outlet Newslaundry, says he has received about 80 official notices in the past four years that he or his company are suspected of tax evasion. Pro-government media outlets are suing Newslaundry for “defamation” and “copyright infringement” when it criticizes their bias. The tax authorities are raiding the newsroom. The police come to question Sekri: once for six hours, the second time for 13.
Sekri is not easily intimidated. He says he can continue because there is nothing suspicious in his life, he has no wife or children to take care of, he is Hindu, and he comes from a privileged background so he knows lawyers who will defend him pro bono. Still, defending is exhausting. And most journalists are much more vulnerable to pressure.
The most vulnerable are not the "high-profile ones in Delhi," says Sekri, but those "who expose the shady dealings of some local godman in a small village." Some of these "godmen" can be vindictive. Jagendra Singh, who wrote about the alleged links of politicians in Uttar Pradesh to the "sand mafia" that steals truckloads of sand from public land and sells it to cement factories, died of burns after a police visit. The police said it was a suicide.
Independent journalism still survives in India, in online outlets like Wire and Caravan, as well as on social media and YouTube. But every reporter faces a choice: between a life of deprivation and danger while telling the truth, or a life of financial and physical security while praising the government.
Almost all of the interviewees in this article mentioned the shift in the White House’s attitude toward media freedom. The American media ecosystem at home is sophisticated and diverse enough to survive, but American policies also affect countries where journalism is more fragile. Orkhan Mamedov, editor of Meydan TV, an independent media outlet in Azerbaijan, a corrupt petrostate in the Caucasus, says that President Ilham Aliyev has previously released political prisoners due to pressure from America. But this year, the pressure has stopped, Mamedov complains; Trump’s family has business ties to the Azerbaijani elite, and Aliyev has slyly endorsed him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Democracy dies in the dark
"When Trump came back to power in 2025, Aliyev shut everything down. About 100 journalists fled or are in prison. We realized that we could no longer work with anyone inside the country. It was too dangerous for them," Mammadov says. Aliyev's tactics are "terrible," he adds. "Every time someone is arrested, they have to hand over their phone and computer. Then the government publishes personal photos found [on them]."
America has previously funded hundreds of independent media outlets in countries with weak civil liberties. Trump has frozen those funds, crippling Meydan and many others. “We have to figure out how to pay our colleagues for legal fees, food, basic necessities in prison,” Mamedov says. In August, a man hired by Meydan to deliver supplies to imprisoned journalists was arrested on charges of “money smuggling.”
In some countries, life has become so difficult for independent journalists that many, like Mamedov, work from abroad. At a conference of such exiles in Kuala Lumpur, the atmosphere was somber. Participants worried about how difficult it is to report remotely. Information is hard to gather; phones may not be secure.
Since the 2021 Pegasus spyware scandal, when it was revealed that many reporters' devices were infected with Israeli software, it has been difficult to convince whistleblowers to talk to journalists anywhere. "One source told me, 'Now I know why my wife lost her job in the civil service,'" recalls Nelson Rauda, a journalist in El Salvador whose phone was hacked.
Even exile is not always safe. Some regimes silence critics from afar. Iran hired a hitman in New York to try to kill Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist who fights for women's rights. In 2021, Belarus diverted a passenger plane to capture Raman Pratasevich, a dissident editor. Since then, Mamedov says, all journalists in exile have feared their flights could be diverted. And Pratasevich today, after two years in detention, praises the corrupt dictatorship that kidnapped him.
Bonus video:
