By Hounaz Beheshti
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Israeli forces boarded the Global Sumud Flotilla last week and detained Dutch journalist<\/a> Gijs Sanders and his cameraman in international waters, together with other members aboard the vessel. They were mid-broadcast and had their press credentials in hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not an isolated incident, but the latest expression of a deliberate pattern to suppress journalism. This short note is about the different forms used by authoritarian regimes, with considerable help from tech companies, to silence critical voices that hold power to account and what it costs us when they succeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2025, at least 86 journalists were killed by Israeli fire<\/a>, more than two-thirds of the global total. 41 Palestinian journalists remain in Israeli detention, and international media have been banned from entering Gaza entirely. When a journalist is arrested mid-broadcast, or a blogger disappears after a critical post, we all know that the intended audience is not just that individual, but every journalist, activist and citizen who is watching. Systematic repression has a global chilling effect where self-censorship and fear become the norm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the Center for News, Technology and Innovation, nearly half of journalists<\/a> surveyed in 2025 have stated that their governments seek too much control over their reporting. Authoritarian governments understand the mechanism of censorship very well and utilise it to silence critical voices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We see the same logic playing out in Iran. The regime’s pressure on press freedom has tightened even further after the deadly crack-down of January 2026 and the following combined attack by US and Israel in February. From January 8th, Iranian journalists lost the ability to reach the outside world because of a near-total communications blackout imposed by Iranian authorities. Since then, the only sources left standing were state-affiliated outlets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those with a public voice online have been singled out. Over 400 Iranian journalists and artists abroad have had their assets inside Iran seized<\/a>. Charges apply broadly to anyone reporting outside the regime’s preferred narrative. In effect, the Iranian regime has criminalised the act of witnessing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\u00a0both\u00a0cases, the intent is to remove the witness and control the narrative.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel and Iran each represent a distinct model of how critical and independent voices are silenced. Whether it is the targeted elimination and detention by a state actor, or the infrastructural control of the means of communication, different censorship methods will have the same outcome: the story doesn’t get told and power continues unchecked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The erosion of press freedom is often framed as a problem of restrictive or undemocratic settings. But the evidence from the United States and Europe shows otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United States, President Trump has pursued a sustained campaign<\/a> of harassment against women journalists in the White House. He has used sexist terms to refer to female journalists, has claimed baseless sexist allegations against them, has questioned the seriousness of their career and their intelligence, and has continuously used a pattern of targeting and harassing women journalists to silence them. Noting that these public attacks by a person of authority will further fuel online abuse towards these reporters. The result is that women journalists are paying a personal cost in order to do their jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Europe is not exempt from this either. Hungary is the starkest proof. Over sixteen years in power, Prime Minister Orb\u00e1n reduced Hungary from 23rd to 68th place in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index<\/a>. He turned public broadcasters into government propaganda outlets and silenced independent private media through biased allocation of state advertising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The European Commission did not open an infringement procedure against Hungary for systemic media freedom violations until December 2025. Nor did it blink at the intimidation campaign targeting the American journalists. In fact, in the free world, such incidents are often labelled as evidence of a robust free speech culture, where people can openly criticize one another, when in reality, they are often simply forms of abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\nTwo Models of Suppression<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Illusion of the “Free World”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Shift to Digital Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n