A regional press freedom watchdog said Tuesday that journalists across the Americas faced homicides, arbitrary arrests, and widespread impunity in 2025, calling it one of the worst years on record for media freedoms in the hemisphere. The Miami-based Inter American Press Association released its annual Chapultepec Index evaluating 23 countries from Canada and the United States to Venezuela and Nicaragua, ranking Venezuela and Nicaragua as nations “without freedom of speech” and placing the United States in the “restrictions” category, noting 170 attacks against journalists there last year.
The report arrives as the Committee to Protect Journalists separately documented 13 journalist murders in Latin America in 2025 — nearly twice the seven murders recorded in 2024 — underscoring what advocates describe as a regional retreat from press protections as authoritarian governments tighten control and criminal gangs extend their reach into media operations.
BOGOTA, Colombia — Press freedom across the Americas suffered a “dramatic deterioration” in 2025, with homicides, arbitrary arrests, and impunity for crimes against journalists marking what a regional watchdog called one of the worst years on record for the profession in the hemisphere.
The Miami-based Inter American Press Association released its annual Chapultepec Index on Tuesday, evaluating press freedom conditions across 23 countries from Canada and the United States to Venezuela and Nicaragua. Venezuela and Nicaragua received the index’s most severe designation — “without freedom of speech” — while Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and El Salvador were classified as countries with “high restriction” on freedom of speech. Canada, Brazil, Chile, and Panama were among those ranked as having “low restrictions.”
The United States ranked in the “restrictions” category. The IAPA recorded 170 attacks against journalists there in 2025 and noted that coverage of operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had raised particular concerns about journalistic freedoms. The organization said the country showed “poor government action against disinformation, as well as government actions aimed at limiting free expression and access to information.” President Donald Trump and other White House officials have “stigmatized” media outlets critical of the administration, the report added.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a separate tracking organization, said 13 journalists were murdered in Latin America in 2025 — nearly twice the seven murders it documented in 2024.
“What CPJ has observed in the region are deliberate attacks by public agencies against the press with the objective of delegitimizing its work,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America coordinator. She added that governments across the region are deploying anti-terrorism laws, cybercrime statutes, and laws targeting nonprofit organizations to criminalize journalism.
The IAPA attributed the rise in attacks partly to the emergence of “authoritarian presidents” in different countries. In Venezuela, self-censorship became the norm among local media, which provided almost no coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to opposition leader María Corina Machado, fearing government reprisals, the report said. In Nicaragua, a constitutional reform placed all branches of government under control of the presidency, and censorship there has become “institutionalized,” the report said.
In Ecuador, 290 acts of aggression against journalists were recorded in 2025, including four murders attributed to criminal gangs. One journalist was shot in the shoulder by police while broadcasting a protest organized by an Indigenous community.
El Salvador, classified as a “high restriction” country, saw 180 attacks against media workers between May and July 2025 alone, the IAPA said. Government officials there have sought to intimidate journalists through lawsuits and criminal investigations, the report noted.
Haiti appeared in the Chapultepec Index for the first time and ranked among the countries with the least press freedom in the Americas. Two journalists were killed in 2024 by gang members who attacked the reopening ceremony of a hospital in Port-au-Prince, according to the report. Crimes against journalists in Haiti go largely unpunished, the IAPA said, as gangs control large portions of the capital and have waged an intimidation campaign against media workers and residents alike.
The IAPA, which has published the Chapultepec Index annually since 2020, has more than 1,300 member news organizations throughout the hemisphere.