RSF releases its 2024 Activity Report
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published its 2024 Activity Report. It highlights the scale of the NGO's activities to protect reliable, independent information at a time when press freedom suffered dramatic setbacks worldwide.
In 2024, the RSF World Press Freedom Index, released every year on 3 May, turned even more red — as it has every year for the past decade. Leaders no longer hide their authoritarian tendencies and their hatred of journalism, press campaigns led by oligarchs, a widespread lack of public trust in the media and the sector’s increased loss of technological control due to the rise of generative AI — never have the advances in journalism made in the 20th century been so undermined.
Facing these crises, RSF — which turns 40 this year — stepped up its actions in 2024, fighting for independent and pluralistic journalism, the protection of journalists and citizens’ right to reliable information.
"How can we rebuild a strong, free, reliable, independent information space from chaos? It will take determination and resolution, which are ingrained in Reporters Without Borders DNA. From criminal litigation to aid for journalists on the ground, from setting up crisis response programmes to unblocking censored websites, from dialogue with heads of state — including authoritarian regimes — to proposals for judicial standards that uphold journalism, RSF stood out in 2024 through its capacity to take action and mobilise.
2024 was particularly marked by press freedom victories. RSF campaigns, which operated on all fronts, helped secure the freedom of Congolese journalist Stanis Bujakera on 19 March, the release of Floriane Irangabiye in Burundi on 16 August, and the liberation of Julian Assange in the United Kingdom on 24 June.
The NGO also distinguished itself by launching several major press freedom projects: the launch of The Propaganda Monitor to expose and curb Russian propaganda, the opening of a Press Freedom Centre in Beirut, and the launch of a project to support Burmese journalists facing brutal repression by the Burmese military junta.
In line with its 2024 commitments, RSF will continue its work on priority subjects and cases in 2025, especially by strengthening its work on environmental journalism and exiled and displaced journalists. 2025 will be the year of new solutions and ways to mobilise. Protecting and promoting press freedom is not just about saving journalists — it also means defending everyone’s right to reliable, independent information.
