129 journalists were killed in 2025 — the deadliest year the CPJ has ever counted

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been counting since 1992. On 25 February 2026, it published the highest number it has ever recorded.

129 journalists and media workers were killed in 2025. More than in any single year of the previous three decades of its data. And it was the second record year in a row — 2024 held the previous high.

CPJ attributes about two-thirds of those deaths to the Israeli military. The majority of the people in that group were Palestinian journalists reporting from Gaza.

The category that matters most

CPJ separates deaths by circumstance. Crossfire is one category. Dangerous assignment is another. The third is murder — its classification for a journalist deliberately targeted because of their work.

In 2025, CPJ classified 47 deaths as murder.

CPJ's finding on those 47 cases is a single sentence: no one has been held accountable in any of them.

No prosecution has followed in any of them.

Where else it happened

The 2025 deaths were not confined to one conflict. CPJ's country breakdown includes:

Bangladesh, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Nepal, Peru, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia each recorded one.

Sudan appearing second is consistent with everything else about that war: it is enormous, it is under-covered, and part of the reason it is under-covered is that reporting from it kills people.

Mexico's six were killed nowhere near a battlefield. That is the other version of this story — the one where a reporter covering local corruption is shot outside their home, and the case is never solved.

Impunity is the mechanism, not the aftermath

CPJ's long-running figure is that around 80 per cent of journalist murders since 1992 remain unsolved.

Impunity is not what happens after the killing. It is the reason the next one is cheap. If the expected cost of murdering a journalist is nothing, the deterrent is nothing, and the calculation for whoever is considering it is straightforward.

Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ's chief executive, framed the year plainly: journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever.