Latin America, Sep 15, 2026.— On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, Red Voces del Sur (Red VDS) published the Spanish language version of its 2025 Shadow Report, its eighth annual report on the state of press freedom in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, Red VDS publishes the report in English. “Cartography of Silence” reveals a dire landscape for the practice of journalism in the region, with 2,484 incidents affecting 3,230 victims across 17 countries.
The most common forms of violence include physical, verbal, and digital attacks, along with a significant increase in stigmatizing discourse, restrictions of access to information, and judicial harassment against media outlets and journalists, among other forms of direct and indirect attacks. Colombia (468), Mexico (400), Argentina (278), and El Salvador (205) recorded the most alerts.
Although the number of alerts decreased compared to 2024 in countries with authoritarian regimes such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, this does not reflect an improvement in press freedom, but rather a rise in more subtle forms of violence, self-censorship, and the exile of media outlets, journalists, and media workers.
An Alarming Increase in Fatalities
The report’s most devastating finding is the surge in lethal violence: 23 journalists were killed in 2025, representing an increase of 9 cases compared to the previous year. This equates to the murder of one journalist every 16 days.
Mexico was once again the most dangerous country for journalists, with 7 murders, followed by unprecedented figures in Ecuador (5) and Peru (4). Most of the victims were investigating corruption or organized crime, and in many cases, they had already been granted state protection measures that proved ineffective.
The State Remains the Primary Perpetrator
The report confirms that the greatest threat to the press comes from those who should guarantee its safety: state actors were responsible for 50.5% of attacks recorded by Red VDS. In countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, Uruguay, Peru, Argentina, and Ecuador, the state accounted for more than 50% of all reported incidents.
An in-depth analysis reveals that state methods of repression against the press have diversified:
- Stigmatizing rhetoric: 547 alerts of stigmatizing discourse were recorded; 59% were issued by government officials and political figures. Argentina topped this category (139 cases), driven primarily by the executive branch’s anti-press narratives.
- Judicial harassment: The 2025 report records 190 alerts of judicial harassment, with a critical increase in Mexico (200% more than in 2024), where the legal system is frequently misused as a tool for harassment and censorship.
- Restrictions on access to information: A total of 279 alerts of restrictions on access to information pertaining to public interest were recorded, including various instances of journalists and media outlets being prohibited from covering government events and entering official venues. Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina recorded more alerts than any other countries.
Digital Violence and “Zones of Silence” are on the Rise
Digital violence has become a central pillar of harassment against the press in Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries such as El Salvador (65.8%), Nicaragua (58.7%), and Chile (45.6%) accounted for most of these attacks. Digital violence tactics include surveillance, hacking, and coordinated smear campaigns.
The report also warns of the expansion of “zones of silence”—areas where independent journalism has disappeared due to exile and self-censorship. In 2025, 31 cases of forced displacement were recorded, with Colombia leading the list (22). These cases are largely due to an increase in parastatal violence that forces journalists to flee their communities to secure their own safety.
Sex-Based Violence Against Women Journalists
The report documented a total of 142 cross-cutting sex-based alerts. This is a cross-cutting indicator, meaning it does not add incidents to the overall count but instead identifies a sex-based violence component within incidents already recorded.
This indicator is triggered by attacks that include questioning a journalist’s professional competence based on sex, misogynistic comments, sexual violence, or attacks linked to coverage of women’s rights. The primary objective of this violence is to discredit female journalists and exclude them from public debate through attacks targeting their private lives, physical appearance, or moral integrity.
At the regional level, digital violence emerged as the primary arena of harassment for this indicator: in Mexico, for example, 80.6% of these alerts occurred online. The most critical findings were concentrated in Brazil, with 31 incidents involving misogynistic insults on social media, and El Salvador, where six cases of sexual violence against journalists were identified—the most alarming finding of the monitoring period.
Urgent Recommendations
In light of this deterioration in the environment for the effective and safe exercise of press freedom, Red VDS urges the region’s governments to:
- Transform protection mechanisms into tools with genuine operational capacity and adequate budgets.
- Immediately cease the stigmatizing discourse coming from heads of state and official spokespeople.
- Promote independent investigations to break the cycle of impunity surrounding the murders of journalists.
- Guarantee effective access to public information as a pillar of the rule of law.
Red VDS is a regional coalition of 17 civil society organizations that, since 2017, has worked to defend freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and access to information in Latin America and the Caribbean, using a common methodology aligned with target 16.10 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Download the full Shadow Report 2025 HERE.