Gambiaj.com – (PARIS, FRANCE) – Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has named US President Donald Trump among its 2026 Press Freedom Predators, accusing him of mounting a sustained campaign against independent journalism during the first two years of his second term.
The list, released on 2 November to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, identifies 33 political leaders, governments, armed groups, criminal organizations and other actors that RSF says have targeted journalists and media outlets during 2026.
RSF placed Trump in the political category, alongside leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, and Afghanistan’s Hibatullah Akhundzada.
According to RSF, Trump’s inclusion follows what it described as an increasingly aggressive effort to reduce journalism to political propaganda in the United States, which ranks 64th in RSF’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index.
The organization said the US president’s attacks have extended beyond rhetoric and policy to include physical restrictions on journalists.
“After narrowly missing the cut last year, US President Donald Trump earned his spot on the 2026 Press Freedom Predators List as a result of his appalling record of attacks on the press after less than two years of his second term,” RSF said.
RSF said the predators on its list employ different methods, including assassinations, imprisonment, propaganda, legal harassment, digital attacks and financial pressure, but share what it described as a common objective of silencing independent voices and limiting citizens’ access to information.
Guinea’s Doumbouya Also Named
The list also includes Guinea’s military leader Mamadi Doumbouya under the security category, which RSF says covers those who kill, attack or imprison journalists.
Doumbouya’s military junta is listed alongside the Israeli armed forces, the Chinese Communist Party, Mexican drug cartels, Burkina Faso’s military junta, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the M23 armed group in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The inclusion of Doumbouya comes amid continued concerns over press freedom and restrictions affecting journalists and media organizations in Guinea.
33 Predators Across Five Categories
RSF divided the 2026 list into five categories: political, security, legal, economic and social.
The legal category includes US Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, Russia’s Roskomnadzor, India’s Adani Group and Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
The economic category features technology companies Alphabet and Meta, Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, Russian media figure Vladimir Tabak, French businessman Vincent Bolloré and Kenyan President William Ruto.
RSF placed Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, Israeli media-monitoring organization HonestReporting, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Argentine President Javier Milei, Russian media figure Margarita Simonyan, Indian outlet OpIndia and Burkina Faso’s BIR-C in the social category for allegedly contributing to attacks on the credibility of journalism and mistrust of journalists.
RSF highlighted Milei in particular, saying an analysis found that he published more than 1,600 posts hostile to the press on X over 47 days between April and May 2026.
RSF Calls List A “Hall Of Shame”
RSF Director General Thibaut Bruttin described the list as a deliberately ironic counterpart to the organization’s annual World Press Freedom Index.
“The Press Freedom Predators List is a bit like RSF’s version of the Razzies: a tongue-in-cheek honours list of the worst of the attacks and abuses directed at the press,” Bruttin said.
He said the list was intended to identify those responsible for declining press freedom rather than simply documenting changes in individual countries.
“Whether they resort to physical or verbal violence, legal abuses, intimidation, digital manipulation of the facts or economic pressure, these predators share the same goal: to prevent journalists from doing their jobs and deprive citizens of information from independent sources,” he said.
RSF said several figures who appeared on its 2025 list have now disappeared from the latest edition. They include Iran’s Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US strike, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, who is now imprisoned in the United States, and former Hungarian and Serbian leaders Viktor Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić, whose political defeats are expected to keep them out of power.
The organization said the methodology behind the list draws directly from the indicators used in its World Press Freedom Index, while focusing specifically on actors responsible for attacks against journalists and independent media during 2026.
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