Amid a worldwide surge of authoritarianism, the U.S. falls again in press-freedom rankings

Every semester, I introduce my media ethics students to the World Press Freedom Index, an annual compilation by Reporters Without Borders that tracks 180 countries.

Follow my Bluesky newsfeed for additional news and commentary. And please join my Patreon for just $6 a month. You’ll receive a supporters-only newsletter every Thursday.

The United States does not do well, and the just-released 2026 update is no exception. We are now 64th, coming in just behind Botswana and just ahead of Panama. As RSF (the French acronym for Reporters Without Borders) puts it, “After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing a significant and prolonged decline in press freedom, with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency greatly exacerbating the situation.”

Other explanations for our low ranking:

• The concentration of ownership under a handful of giant corporations.
• The ongoing local-news crisis.
• The Trump regime’s attacks on the press, including the censorship of government data, the defunding of public media, and bogus lawsuits aimed at intimidation.
• A profound lack of public trust in media institutions.
• Physical attacks on journalists by protesters and law-enforcement officers as well as various forms of harassment.

As I tell my students, we should think about press freedoms in the U.S. in terms of positive and negative rights — an idea I learned from the media scholar Victor Pickard. Despite Trump’s depradations, we remain strong in terms of negative rights, which can be thought of as “thou shalt nots.”

Libel protections are still intact, even though two members of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, would like to weaken them. Criticism of the government is protected. Official censorship is rare. One exception to these thou-shalt-nots is that the press’ legal ability to protect confidential sources and documents is weak, and the RSF report notes that attempts to strengthen those protections at the federal level have failed.

Positive rights, though, are severely lacking. Those include such ideas as public access to the media in a system controlled almost entirely by private interests; a decent level of funding for public media; a robust local-news environment; and public trust so that news organizations are taken seriously, especially when they report on such matters as official corruption and wrongdoing. Of course, that trust must be earned. But the knee-jerk reaction of MAGA Republicans to dismiss every bit of negative reporting as “fake news” is corrosive to civic discourse.

So how might it be different? Consider Norway, which is ranked No. 1. RSF says:

Norway’s legal framework safeguarding press freedom is robust. The media market is vibrant, featuring a strong public service broadcaster and a diversified private sector, and publishing companies maintain extensive editorial independence.

The top 10 countries are all European. The bottom five, in case you’re interested, are Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea and Eritrea.

The worldwide situation has deteriorated as well:

[P]olitical pressure on the press is intensifying, authoritarian tendencies are growing and the media market is heavily weakened. This year, the Index’s analysis highlights an alarming deterioration in the conditions for journalism in many parts of the world, despite some isolated improvements, as 100 out of 180 countries and territories have seen their press freedom score decline.

We are living through an authoritarian moment, not just in the United States but across the world. It’s not clear how we are going to get through this.