“State of the Free Press 2025”
“Be Bold America!” Sunday, December 15, 2024 at 5:00pm (PT)
“First they came for the journalists. We don’t know what happened after that.” – Maria Ressa
Every year, Project Censored highlights the vital stories that corporate media underreported, exposes rampant news abuse, and tracks emerging threats against the press from financial and political powers
“State of the Free press 2025” comes at a time when trust in the media is at an all-time low. A 2024 Pew Research Poll found that a remarkable 73 percent of adult Americans believe a free press is either extremely or very important to the well-being of society—though only a third of those polled believe that US media are completely free to report news.
Half of those surveyed believe that US news organizations are influenced a great deal by corporate/financial or government/political interests. Reporters Without Borders gave the US a score of 66.59 out of a possible 100 points in their 2024 World Press Freedom Index—a drop of nearly five points from 2023.
Tragically, 2024 stands out as the year that the corporate media failed to adequately cover Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and the threat it poses to the whole world. With their gaze trained elsewhere, the powerful got a pass from the very institution that should hold them to account.
In 2023, Reporters Without Borders labeled US press freedom “satisfactory;” in 2024, they called it “problematic.”
Interview Guest:
SHEALEIGH VOITL is the digital and print editor at Project Censored. She first began her research with the Project at North Central College alongside Steve Macek, co-authoring the Déjá Vu News chapter in the State of the Free Press 2022 and 2023 yearbooks, and the Top 25 chapter in SFP 2023.
In addition to her editorial contributions to the yearbook series and work with the Campus Affiliates Program, Shealeigh helped develop the State of the Free Press 2024 teaching guide and the Project’s “Critical Media Literacy in Action” social media series. Her writing has also been featured in Truthout, The Progressive, and Ms. Magazine.
