Ben Grazda examines some of the long-term challenges facing American journalists including economic pressure leading to the disappearance of many local news outlets; concentration of ownership; political attacks on government critics and the January 2026 FBI raid on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, which sets a dangerous precedent for the future prosecution of journalists doing their jobs. Grazda summarizes Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières) World Press Freedom Index tracking the decline in freedom of the press around the world, and the steep decline here in the U.S.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right now, I’m very happy to welcome to our program Ben Grazda, advocacy manager with the international organization, Reporters Without Borders. Ben, thank you so much. Appreciate your making time to be with us on our Counterpoint program this evening.
BEN GRAZDA: No, thanks so much for having me.
SCOTT HARRIS: We are going to talk about an important report just issued by Reporters Without Borders called the World Press Freedom Index. But before we get there, tell our listeners about the work of Reporters Without Borders that I believe was founded in France in 1985.
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah, exactly. And again, thanks so much for having me. So our mission as a press freedom organization is really to protect the freedom, pluralism and independence of journalism around the world and defend those who are practicing journalism. And so while we do see defending journalists and journalism as our main priority, what we really see as our key mission is protecting people’s ability to receive information. And so we do that by protecting journalists. And so that’s everything from trying to get journalists out of jail in China to protecting against or protecting journalists in Lebanon with protective equipment to supporting environmental journalists’ ability to do their jobs in Brazil, to trying to fight censors in Russia and actually beam in content into Russia and occupying Ukraine. So really just trying to do the whole gambit of protecting journalists’ ability to do their work in order for them to be able to provide information to people.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks for that summary, Ben. Just recently, your organization, Reporters Without Borders, released your World Press Freedom Index, which for the first time as I read, the group found that over half of the world’s nations are losing press freedom. Tell us about that.
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah. No, it’s not great, unfortunately. And a lot of work goes into the index, so I do want to briefly describe how it’s put together. So we’ve been monitoring press freedom through this index for about 25 years. It’s compiled by surveying hundreds of people from around the world. We have networks of people who are intimately familiar with the situation in each and every country that we score. It’s based on both quantitative and qualitative data and we survey journalists, researchers, academics, human rights defenders and we measure scores around legal, security, political, social and economic factors. I’m happy to dive into any of those.
But as you said, it’s not great news. For the first time since we’ve started reporting, the average score in all 180 countries that we monitor has never been so low. And like you said, over half the countries are in our bottom two categories of “difficult or very serious.” And just to put that in perspective, this category was only a small minority, about 13 percent in 2002 when we started monitoring. And one other thing I’d just like to highlight to folks is in that same year in 2002 when we started, 20 percent of the global population lived in the country where the state of press freedom was categorized as good, but 25 years later, it’s less than 1 percent. So we’ve really both seen both the top scores get worse and also more countries fall into those bottom scores.
SCOTT HARRIS: Ben, I want to get to some examples of what’s happening here in the United States that was documented in the report as well. But I wondered if you give some examples of the loss of press freedom on the world’s continents. We’re not going to get to all the countries, obviously, but I wonder if you’d highlight some of the examples of the criminalization of journalism, repression of reporters and their news outlets and certainly the assassination of journalists who offend the powerful. And I’d even include in this, I think one of the worst examples of the repression of journalists is what’s happened in Gaza over the last several years where it really appears there’s quite substantial evidence that Israel and its war in Gaza has targeted journalists for assassination.
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah. And we’ve seen videos with our own eyes of journalists who are literally trying to communicate with people holding cell phones up in one of the few places where they can still get Internet access and just being killed with Israeli bombs. And so that is direct targeting of journalists. Statistically, we’ve seen over 220 journalists that have been killed since Oct. 7, including at least 70 who are killed while doing their work. And just like in addition to the killing of journalists, which is horrific, we’ve seen still an existing international or blockade against international journalists from entering Gaza. And so you basically have these journalists who are doing the best they can to do their work and being targeted and killed at the same time where the Israeli government is preventing international journalists from entering Gaza. And so we have people in the Middle East who are fighting every day to try to protect journalists in Gaza, in Palestine from being attacked, but that is definitely one of the worst situations that we see.
To your point on the legal threats, we see the legal indicator was actually our worst indicator, which means that it dropped—that there’s bigger increase in legal threats against journalists between last year and this year. And so in three out of every five countries, the legal situation for journalists actually got worse and a lot of this is through this defense secrets and national security laws that have been used to target journalists. So that obviously happens in Russia, Belarus, the Philippines and India and other places, but we’re also seeing that in the U.S. with raids of journalists’ homes, subpoenas against journalists, kicking journalists out of the Pentagon because they’re supposedly trying to get classified information when all they’re trying to do is go to the briefing room. So yeah, the legal threats against journalists are increasing a lot.
SCOTT HARRIS: Ben, the Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index found that the United States has fallen 14 points since 2022 when that report was last issued. The same downward trend, the report says, that’s seen in other regions in the world, including Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. I wondered if you give us the top line concern about the erosion of press freedom here in the United States.
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah. Well, I think overall what we see in the U.S. as a threat is Donald Trump and the Trump administration basically trying to control what information people get and they’re doing a variety of things to make that happen. So they’re not just strategically cutting off sources of information, but they’re also amplifying sources of disinformation. Trump is attacking journalists. He calls female journalists “Piggy.” He is asking reporters which outlet they’re from and if he doesn’t like that outlet, he’s basically just yelling at their faces. He’s weaponized the FCC into basically a bribery scheme where he’ll threaten the station. The FCC will threaten them with regulation and then maybe force them to settle which we’ve seen with Paramount and what was happening there with the allegations against CBS. We’ve seen them restricting access, not just in the Pentagon, but kicking the Associated Press out of the newsroom for not using “Gulf of America.”
They’re trying to limit foreign journalists, how long foreign journalists can stay in the U.S. They’re even deporting journalists that come from migrant communities and that’s having a massive impact on the ability for people that come from Spanish and other migrant communities to get reliable information.
SCOTT HARRIS: And we know also that some of these major media companies that want the authorization from the various federal agencies in the U.S. under the Trump administration to move forward with these mergers are gifting all sorts of … They’re self-censoring or firing journalists that are not in the good graces of the Trump administration. And you have an erosion of press freedom here in the United States owing to this drive for concentration of ownership of media companies in the U.S. And I think what happened with CBS and the takeover by Paramount and Skydance of CBS has directly impacted the programming including the news and most recently the award-winning and very profitable program, “60 Minutes.”
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah, definitely. I mean, to put a finer point, yeah, totally agree. And to put a finer point on what I was trying to say earlier, the Trump administration was suing CBS for a lot of money and basically as soon as they settled, that deal was able to go through, I think it was just like a couple of days after. And so what we’ve seen is the editorial decisions at CBS … so basically you have billionaires who have stated that they’re very favorable towards the Trump administration installing new editorial control at news organizations and then those editors making decisions that the reporters are telling us publicly and privately are threatening their ability to do journalism. And so you basically have from the president of the United States to its regulator to the people who own these companies and what is seemingly like a concentrated effort to control the editorial decisions at news stations.
And so that happened with the Paramount Skydance merger, but we’re also looking at the Paramount Warner Bros. merger and how that could impact CNN and others. And basically what we’re trying to fight and trying to get more information about is how the takeover of Warner Bros. by Paramount would then impact the editorial decisions of any news stations that currently exist under that umbrella.
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re speaking with Ben Grazda, advocacy manager with the international organization, Reporters Without Borders and we’re talking about the group’s recently issued World Press Freedom Index. And Ben, I wonder if there are any bright spots or lessons we can learn from countries or democracies that had their press freedom eroded and what populations, people who were in support of democracy, what they may have done to protect press freedom in their countries and restored it. Are there any such stories that we can look to for a little hope?
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question. I appreciate that. I think what we’ve seen with Maria Ressa in the Philippines and what she’s said is, “Consistently to hold the line.” And I think that when you’ve seen journalists, when you’ve seen civil society, when you’ve seen just normal people stand up and fight back against what the government is doing to control the information that they rely on, I mean, people don’t just like journalism for the politics, right? It tells you, is this food safe to eat? Is this politician taking money from me? Is the air for my children clean enough for them to breathe? And people make decisions based on this reporting. And so people really have stood up and supported publications that have provided them with reliable information and not basically succumb to government control. And I think that that’s something that a lot of newsrooms should and do take into account.
I’m also reminded of, and I forget the name of it, but there’s an independent female-run outlet, basically a podcast in Myanmar. And what they told us is when the government started controlling all the information, when they weren’t able to do their journalism job anymore, they basically just started their own outlet. And so they were able to, while start small, still provide reliable information and they grew from there. And so I think unfortunately when some of the systems do fall, people are still finding ways to provide independent information. And I think that the more that we can support independent journalists, independent information that is reliable, that is giving us the information that we need to support our families, support just our democracy, I think that that’s really useful. And in the U.S., I’ve seen a lot of examples, too, of journalists finding new ways to adapt to this environment.
I’m from a small town in southwest Colorado and there’s a few public radio stations there and they don’t get a ton of money and they’ve been kind of struggling with some of the funding situation for a while, but when NPR or when the cuts to public radio came about a year ago, they had to really scramble and find new ways to structure their news organization. And so what they’re doing now is they’re sharing an environmental reporter across a few different stations, each pitching in for a bit of salary and that journalist is supporting reporting on agriculture, on water, on heat across the region and kind of pitching in to report for different audiences. And they’re also doing that with an engineer because there’s a lot of highway between each of the different radio stations and so they’re pitching in to have someone kind of drive between the different stations and support the infrastructure there.
So I think that kind of resource sharing is useful. And what I would definitely say to folks listening is if you support or if you rely on any kind of information to live your life and you’re getting that from a place that you trust, really support that local station.
SCOTT HARRIS: That certainly relates to us here at listener-supported WPKN in Bridgeport.
BEN GRAZDA: For sure.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you. Thank you for that, Ben. In conclusion, I wanted to ask you, and I think this is a question that I think many of our listeners understand quite well. And I wonder if you just from your own perspective and being really steeped in the details of the decline of a free press in this country and around the world, tell us what you believe the role of a free press is in a democratic nation linked to the health and vibrancy of that democracy.
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah. I think that if you’re not able to tell the government what you want them to do and how you want them to represent you, then you don’t have a functioning democracy and if you can’t understand the situation around you in order to make that decision and in order to kind of stand up for your right to speak, then I think that you basically need a free press in order to understand where you fit into a democracy. Sorry, that probably wasn’t the most … I’ll just say that when looking at my situation and my life, I rely on the information from journalists around the world to understand where I fit in it and understand how I want to see the world. And so that’s what I would say is the value of oppress. It helps me understand the world and where I want it to go from here.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well said. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Before you leave, leave our listeners with the website where they can find the World Press Freedom Index just released last month.
BEN GRAZDA: Yeah. So if you go to rsf.org—we go by our French acronym of Reporter Sans Frontieres—but rsf.org. And if you just look on our page, it’s linked at the top, the World Press Freedom Index. And if you want to learn more about any country, there’s a very interactive way that you can select the country, you can select which year you’re looking at. So please check out the U.S. page, check out a couple of other pages. It’s a really great resource that a lot of people put work into and really can really help you understand the state of press freedom around the world.
SCOTT HARRIS: Ben, thanks for all your critically important work at Reporters Without Borders and I hope we’ll stay in touch to talk more about the things you’re working on. Appreciate it.
BEN GRAZDA: All right. Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks, Ben. Goodnight. That’s Ben Grazda, advocacy manager with the international organization, Reporters Without Borders.
