ISRAEL killed at least 84 media workers and journalists in 2025 far more than any other country in what was the deadliest year on record for the news media.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released the findings on Wednesday in its annual report and pointed to “a persistent culture of impunity for attacks on the press” by Israel’s military.
A total of 129 media workers were killed in 2025, the highest figure since the watchdog group began keeping records in 1992. Israel was responsible for more than two-thirds of the death toll.
Most of the media workers Israel killed were Palestinian, but Israeli air strikes also killed 31 staff in Yemeni newspaper offices, the CPJ said.
Israel was overwhelmingly responsible for targeted killings, which the CPJ classifies as “murder”, carrying out 38 of 47 deadly incidents recorded globally by the organisation.
“Israel has now killed more journalists than any other government since CPJ began collecting records in 1992,” it said in a statement.
It cautioned that the true number of journalists targeted and killed by Israel could be much higher because some of the killings could be potentially concealed by press restrictions and humanitarian difficulties that complicate conducting investigations during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
“With much contemporaneous evidence now destroyed, the true number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza who were deliberately targeted by Israel may never be known,” the CPJ said.
The rights group listed five Al Jazeera journalists as having been “murdered” in Israeli attacks, including Anas al-Sharif and three others killed by an Israeli strike on a journalist tent in Gaza City. It also named slain Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Hossam Shabat as among those targeted.
In total since the start of the war, Israel has killed nearly 300 journalists and media workers, according to Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in 2022.
Israel has acknowledged killing some journalists while accusing them of having ties to armed groups – claims rejected by their employers and criticised by the CPJ as “deadly smears”.
Outside Gaza and Yemen, the most attacks that killed journalists in 2025 occurred in Sudan, which is in the throes of a civil war, and Mexico, which has been swept by violence linked to organised crime.
Nine journalists were killed in Sudan and six in Mexico. Four Ukrainian journalists were also killed by Russian military attacks, the CPJ report said.