Mapping Media Freedom: Monitoring Report 2024

Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) published its annual Europe-focused report documenting press freedom violations in the EU Member States and nine candidate countries between January and December 2024. MFRR recorded a total of 1,548 press freedom violations with 2,567 entities or media professionals involved. The 359 of those violations were online attacks – a significant increase from 266 such cases recorded in the previous year. Legal attacks against journalists also occurred more frequently: 319 cases concerning 556 media workers or organizations. MFRR described demonstrations and protests as “among the most dangerous environments for journalists in 2024”: more than 50% of the 271 protest-related press freedom violations documented were physical attacks on reporters – with police or state security forces often being the perpetrators.