CPJ counted 129 press deaths in 2025, 47 of them classed as murder and 39 involving drones

The Committee to Protect Journalists published its count of press deaths for 2025 on 25 February 2026. The headline number, 129 journalists and media workers killed, is repeated far more often than the structure underneath it, and the structure is where the disagreements sit.

CPJ records 129 deaths, the highest in a record it has kept since 1992, and the second consecutive annual record. Of those, 47 are classified as murder, meaning CPJ assesses the person was deliberately targeted for their work, and CPJ says that is the highest murder figure in a decade. More than three quarters of the deaths, 104 of 129, occurred in conflict settings. CPJ attributes 86 deaths to Israel, roughly two thirds of the global total, and says Israel was responsible for 81 per cent of the murder cases. Within the 86, 55 were Palestinians reporting from Gaza. Elsewhere CPJ records 9 deaths in Sudan, 6 in Mexico, 4 in Ukraine, 3 in the Philippines, and single deaths in a longer list of countries including the Saudi columnist Turki al Jasser, executed after seven years in detention.

The drone figure is new rather than incidental. CPJ documents 39 deaths in 2025 involving drones, against 2 in 2023. Military drones were confirmed or suspected in 33 of the 39. CPJ attributes 28 of the drone deaths in Gaza to Israel's military, 5 in Sudan to the Rapid Support Forces, 4 in Ukraine to the Russian military and one in Iraq to a suspected Turkish strike. Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ's chief executive, said journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever.

On accountability, CPJ records no prosecutions arising from the targeted killings it documented in 2025, and notes that about 80 per cent of journalist murders globally since 1992 remain unsolved.

Israel rejects the report. The Israel Defense Forces told The Jerusalem Post, in a piece published on 26 February 2026, that it does not intentionally harm journalists or their family members, and that CPJ's findings rest on general allegations, data of unknown origin and predetermined conclusions, without accounting for the complexity of combat or the military's efforts to reduce harm to non combatants. The IDF also cited research by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli research body, asserting that about 60 per cent of those identified as journalists killed between 7 October 2023 and 30 November 2025 were members of or affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That is an Israeli assessment of Israeli intelligence material and it has not been independently verified. The IDF further noted that of the 86 deaths CPJ attributes to Israel, 55 were in Gaza and the remainder were at a media centre in Yemen which the military describes as a propaganda arm of the Houthis. CPJ's own report puts 31 deaths in Israeli strikes on newspaper offices in Yemen, which is consistent arithmetic on a contested characterisation.

CPJ's methodology is public and it is not a single bucket. Its database separates confirmed from unconfirmed motive, and within confirmed work related killings distinguishes murder from crossfire and from dangerous assignment. It also separates journalists from media workers. CPJ says it does not include people where there is evidence of engaging in combat or inciting imminent violence. That last clause became the subject of a public dispute in mid 2026.

On 28 June 2026 the Palestinian writer Mohammed El Kurd accused CPJ of preparing to exclude journalists from government funded Palestinian and Lebanese outlets while retaining those from state funded Israeli, American and Ukrainian outlets, calling it a racist scandal of massive proportions, as reported by Middle East Monitor on 29 June 2026. CPJ said it was conducting a full review of its database of journalists killed during the war in Gaza, after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published obituaries identifying some individuals CPJ had listed as journalists. On 2 July 2026 CPJ's board chair Jacob Weisberg said it is not true that CPJ planned to change its definition of who is a journalist to exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese press, and that the board had voted to affirm the existing definition rather than change it.

Definitions are not a technicality here, because different organisations count differently. UNESCO's observatory covers journalists, media workers and social media producers engaged in journalistic activity, verified through press freedom and human rights organisations, a broader frame than CPJ's murder category and one that produces different totals.

What is not yet known is the outcome of CPJ's database review, whether any of the 129 entries are revised, and whether any investigation anywhere produces a prosecution. As of CPJ's publication in February 2026, none had.