On the occasion of the publication of its new map of the state of press freedom in the world, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) draws up an alarming assessment, including a regression in the United States. To decipher these findings, Thibaut Bruttin, general director of the organization which has produced this ranking since 2002, is the guest of “11AM/1PM”.
This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the interview above. Click on the video to watch it in full.
Yann Haefele: I would like us to see this map that you are publishing, so the darker it is, the more press freedom is in danger and threatened, the clearer it is, the better the situation. Already, perhaps an overall point: we can clearly see that there is a pole emerging at the level of Asia, North Africa, the countries are in scarlet red, how do we explain this?
Thibaut Bruttin: That is to say that you have repressive regimes which wish to control information in Russia, in China. You also have a lot of violence against journalists in India. And that explains why this map is so dark today, and it has darkened profoundly in 25 years. This 2026 edition also allows us to take a retrospective look, since the world ranking has existed since 2002.
And that’s the trend of this 2026 ranking, a global decline in press freedom in the world?
Yes, let’s say that in the 25 years that we have been measuring press freedom, we have seen that the average score has dropped considerably. It was 72 points out of 100 in 2002, today it is 54 points. This is telling you the unscrewing. And it’s true that the map has darkened. There are fewer and fewer countries today where press freedom is guaranteed. And so that worries us. Today is an opportunity to sound the alarm. We must have public policies that take into account the need for journalism. We also need to have a stronger international voice to express the needs of journalism, to express the need to stand alongside working reporters.
What makes a country considered to have a high level of press freedom or not?
Press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, is more than the safety of journalists. The safety of journalists is the first brick. Not being incarcerated, not being beaten, not being murdered, not being kidnapped, this is fundamental. But we also look at the media economy, the social context, citizen confidence, and then the legal and political framework. And you see clearly that in many countries around the world, you have political speech that is very violent, very hostile to journalism. You also use the law to try to silence journalists. This ranking is a robust methodology which is very transparent and which is based on objective questions answered by experts country by country. The ranking that you see is, without any rework, the raw data that comes back to us from the field.
What stands out in this ranking is the diving of the United States. They drop in your rankings. What is happening in this America of Donald Trump?
The second version of Donald Trump, second term, is obviously much worse than in the first term. And then generally, the United States of America has never been a territory that has been particularly highly ranked in this world ranking. The situation had become problematic in 2024. And there, we see that with Donald Trump, we have moved into a sort of higher gear. You have an instrumentalization of the financing, or definancing in this case, of public service media to establish, I would say, Trump’s words. You also have legal proceedings initiated by the Trump administration. And then even the words of Donald Trump, which are extremely violent words, extremely hostile to journalists, which range from sexist insults to mockery which are particularly offensive. So the United States today is moving away from this position and I believe that we are perhaps at the beginning of a new era when we see the threats weighing on television channels with a regulator who is obviously in charge.
Click on the video to watch the interview in full.
Originally published at Almouwatin.com
