00:00Reporter Sans Frontieres has published its press freedom rankings for 2025.
00:05And the rankings range from Norway, Estonia and the Netherlands at the top to China, North Korea and Eritrea at the bottom.
00:12But the United States has also fallen to its lowest ever ranking at 57th as concerns about editorial independence under the Trump administration gather steam.
00:22RSF has also remarked on a general decline in press freedom across the world with its index at its lowest ever score.
00:28And it warns that the powerless economic status of media groups threatens press freedom.
00:34We're joined now by the Director-General of Reporter Sans Frontieres, Thibault Broutin.
00:38Good morning, Thibault. This paints a rather gloomy picture for press freedom worldwide.
00:44Yeah, absolutely. It's unfortunately a situation that we monitor on a yearly basis.
00:50And what we see is that 60% of the countries we monitor have a decline of press freedom.
00:56And so there are many explanations to that.
01:00We think that one of the most unspoken issue is the question of the economy of the media, which is something that we measure.
01:08And it is at its lowest currently.
01:11And we think we need to fix that collectively.
01:14Public policies should be put in place in order to stop that.
01:18Now, with regard to the economy, obviously, just the actual funding and falling advertising revenues are the main ones, problems.
01:28But is there also perhaps the temptation to resort to artificial intelligence or other tools like that for journalists?
01:35Yes. And media outlets or, I mean, news media outlets are facing a competition with propaganda, with commercial content, with AI-generated content.
01:47And that is unfair.
01:48And we think the value, especially the value of advertising, has gone to other actors.
01:54So we need to restore a comparative advantage for doing journalism.
01:58Journalism is costly.
02:00It takes time.
02:01It takes energy.
02:02It takes people.
02:03And we need to make sure that it pays off at the end.
02:06And so there is a big issue that we need to solve, which is how to restore this advantage for journalism in a very dangerous and difficult media ecosystem.
02:17Now, the United States has seen a slide, a slight slide on last year, down to 57th in the press freedom rankings.
02:26And this is largely due to the environment under the Trump administration.
02:31Yeah.
02:31And also the preparatory, you know, work that has been done to the press.
02:37It's obvious that there are two ways to see things.
02:41Trump has been elected because also there is a news desert in so many counties in the U.S.
02:47But also people are legitimately annoyed by the fact they don't feel that they're represented in the media in the United States.
02:55So the attacks of the Trump administration against media in the U.S. is also echoed by what they're doing to media abroad.
03:05And the cut of the funding of USAID, which was one of the main sources of funding for independent media and media in exile, is very dramatic.
03:15But we also see what they're doing to USAGM, the agency that is monitoring and supervising Voice America or Radio Free Europe.
03:25This is a gift to dictators.
03:26This is something that Putin or Xi Jinping have dreamt of.
03:31But it's very likely that Donald Trump is going to offer that to them.
03:34And just speaking on that, does this decline in press freedom in the United States and also other Western democracies,
03:42does that sort of boost perhaps press, like boost the countries in non-democratic societies, governments who perhaps maybe the eye has been taking off them, so to speak?
03:57Yes. And every time there is a decline or, you know, shortening of the budget of media outlets in Western democracies,
04:08we see an uptick of the interest for the production, the content of propaganda outlets.
04:15Nature eats the void.
04:16And so, for example, I'm very afraid that of what could happen for the 400 million of people that are watching Voice America and Radio Free Europe.
04:27It's very likely that when the U.S. withdraw, we'll see more Russian propaganda, more Chinese propaganda.
04:34And we need to make sure that the voice of democracy and of free press is heard.
04:40That's why I think it's very important to have outlets like France 24 doing its job.
04:46Thank you very much for that, Thibaut Brutin of Reporters on Frontier.
