47 deliberate killings classified as “murder” were documented by the watchdog, with Israel responsible for 81% of them
NEW YORK — The year 2025 was the deadliest for journalists and media workers since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began documenting press fatalities more than three decades ago.
In its special report released on Wednesday (February 25), CPJ recorded 129 killings worldwide — the highest annual figure in its database since 1992.
“At a time when armed conflict has reached historic levels around the world,” the report states, “journalist killings also reached an all-time high primarily due to the actions of one government: Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist and media worker killings in 2025.”
This marks the second consecutive year in which journalist deaths reached record levels, driven overwhelmingly by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and related regional operations.
The CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organisation based in New York. It promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.
According to CPJ, “More than 60% of the 86 members of the press killed by Israeli fire in 2025 were Palestinians reporting from Gaza, where human rights groups and UN experts agree a genocide is taking place.”
The scale of Israeli responsibility stands apart. While journalist deaths in Sudan and Ukraine rose modestly, CPJ stresses that Israel “remains a significant exception” in both volume and pattern.
The organisation concluded that Israel has now “killed more journalists than any other government since CPJ began collecting records in 1992,” making the Israel-Gaza war “the deadliest on record for journalists.”
Deliberate Targeting
CPJ documented 47 cases in 2025 that it classified as “murder,” meaning the organisation found reasonable grounds to believe the journalist was deliberately targeted because of their work.
Israel was responsible for 81 per cent of those targeted killings.
“The deliberate targeting and killing of a journalist by any military, who are required to protect civilians under international law, constitutes a war crime,” CPJ wrote.
It added that “very few transparent investigations have been conducted” into these killings and “no one has been held accountable in any of the cases.”
The report notes that many targeted journalists had reported extensively on alleged Israeli war crimes, including starvation tactics and attacks on hospitals.
CPJ cited the killing of Hossam Shabat, a correspondent for Al-Jazeera Mubasher and contributor to Drop Site News, who was killed in March 2025 in what CPJ documented as a direct Israeli drone strike on his vehicle near the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza.
Israel accused Shabat of being affiliated with Hamas, but, as CPJ notes, provided no credible evidence.
This pattern of posthumous criminalisation is addressed directly in the report: “Israel, in particular, has repeatedly killed journalists whom it subsequently — and in some cases preemptively — alleged were militants, without providing credible evidence to support its claims.”
Such smears, CPJ argues, are part of a broader global trend of “deadly smears,” where governments justify violence against journalists by framing them as security threats.
Remote Assassinations
One of the report’s most alarming findings is the dramatic rise in drone killings.
CPJ documented 39 journalist deaths involving drones in 2025 — a staggering increase from two in 2023, the first year the organisation began tracking such cases.
Of those 39 deaths, 28 were attributed to Israel’s military in Gaza.
“Suspected and documented killings of press members spiked from just two in 2023 … to 39 in 2025,” the report states. “Military drones were confirmed or thought to be behind 33 of those killings.”
In Gaza, drones have repeatedly targeted journalists in areas presumed to be protected under international law.
On June 5, an Israeli drone strike on a courtyard at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital killed editor Suleiman Hajjaj and camera operator Ismail Baddah of Palestine Today TV. Another journalist, Ahmad Qalaja, succumbed to injuries the following day.
In August, five journalists were killed in what CPJ describes as a “double-tap” strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. A Reuters investigation found that the strike targeted a journalist’s camera that had been positioned there for months, with the Israeli military’s knowledge.
CPJ warns that drone warfare allows militaries to visually identify targets with precision, raising serious legal questions when journalists are struck.
Gaza: Epicentre of Global Crisis
Within the broader context of global conflict, CPJ states unequivocally that Israel’s conduct is “unparalleled.”
“Israel has now killed more journalists than any other government since CPJ began collecting records in 1992,” the report declares.
It adds that “amid the extreme constraints imposed on Gaza, including a ban on independent foreign press access, destroyed communications infrastructure, mass displacement, and widespread loss of life, it is difficult to investigate the circumstances of each death.”
The ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza has left Palestinian reporters as the primary witnesses to the genocide — and therefore uniquely exposed.
Palestine Chronicle has documented the killing of several of its own writers and contributors in Gaza. Some were killed alongside their spouses and children when their homes were bombed.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate reported that more than 700 family members of journalists have been killed since October 2023.
“The journalist is no longer the sole target,” the Syndicate stated. “The family has been transformed into a tool of pressure and collective punishment.”
Collapse of Accountability
CPJ emphasises that impunity fuels repetition.
“Very few transparent investigations have been held into the cases of targeted killings documented by CPJ in 2025, and no one has been held accountable in any of these cases.”
The report adds that CPJ has found “no one has been held accountable for any targeted killings of a journalist by Israel since October 7, 2023, or in the preceding 22 years.”
Globally, 80 percent of journalist killings remain unsolved.
The organisation calls for independent investigations and insists that accountability must extend “from the individuals in the IDF units through to the highest level of the command chain.”
Politics of Erasure
CPJ’s findings confirm what Palestinian journalists have long warned: the genocide in Gaza has unfolded alongside the systematic elimination of its witnesses.
The killing of journalists in Gaza is not incidental. It functions within a broader military and political architecture aimed at narrative control.
By assassinating journalists, bombing media offices, destroying communications infrastructure, and targeting family homes, Israel has narrowed the space for documentation of civilian suffering.
The posthumous labelling of slain reporters as militants — without evidence — further entrenches impunity and attempts to legitimise their deaths.
The scale of the killings — 86 journalists killed by Israeli fire in a single year, with over 265 killed since October 7, 2023 — is historically unprecedented.
CPJ’s own language is unequivocal: Israel has killed more journalists than any government since records began.
Within the framework of genocide — as described by human rights groups and UN experts — the silencing of journalists serves a strategic purpose. It reduces evidence collection, weakens international scrutiny, and attempts to erase testimony.
If, as CPJ warns, “attacks on the media are a leading indicator of attacks on other freedoms,” then Gaza represents the most extreme manifestation of that warning.
The 129 journalists killed in 2025 are not merely casualties of war. They are victims of a global collapse of accountability — with Gaza as its epicentre.
And until impunity ends, the record set in 2025 may not remain unmatched for long.
