Finland delivered the World Press Freedom Day 2026 statement to the OSCE on behalf of 15 members of the Informal Group of Friends on the Safety of Journalists, with 19 further participating States aligning. The breadth of support gives the text weight inside the organisation and signals that the issue is being treated as a shared security and governance concern, not solely as a sectoral media issue. The statement does not present media freedom as a stand-alone civil liberty. It places a free, independent and pluralistic media within both national and international security policy, and situates this year's theme, "Shaping a Future at Peace", within that frame.
According to the joint statement, independent reporting during conflict gives affected communities access to accurate and timely information. That is presented not simply as a democratic safeguard, but as something that can protect lives and livelihoods when official information is partial, delayed or disputed. The text also links public interest journalism to information integrity. In that reading, factual reporting helps counter disinformation and propaganda at moments when military escalation and political pressure make false narratives more likely.
A notable feature of the statement is the role it assigns to journalism in accountability. It says free media can act as an early warning mechanism for possible war crimes and can preserve public scrutiny when other forms of oversight are weak or inaccessible. It also argues that reporting can support dialogue by carrying voices that are often absent from mediation and peace processes. The practical point for governments is that protecting reporters is not separate from conflict prevention, civilian protection or peacebuilding.
The statement reinforces that case with figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which recorded 129 journalists and media workers killed in 2025. It describes that total as the highest annual toll since CPJ began compiling the data more than three decades ago. Set against that figure, the legal position is clear. Journalists covering armed conflict are protected under international humanitarian law, and UN Security Council Resolution 2222 (2015) recognises the need for their safety. The statement's warning is that the gap between formal protection and actual conditions has widened sharply, with visible press identification no longer offering reliable safety.
The most pointed country-specific section concerns Russia's war against Ukraine. The joint statement says journalists and media workers have been killed, arbitrarily detained, tortured and subjected to enforced disappearance by Russia while carrying out their work. It also says media infrastructure has come under direct attack. On that basis, the statement calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all media actors imprisoned because of their professional activities, including in temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. That turns the text from a general defence of media freedom into a direct demand tied to conduct in an active conflict.
The statement then widens its focus to conditions inside Russia and Belarus. It says journalists there have faced harassment, attack and imprisonment on politically motivated charges, often through the use of so-called "anti-extremism" and "anti-terrorism" laws. One of the sharper points in the text is that audiences are also being criminalised for seeking independent information. That suggests a broader model of control in which states do not only restrict publication, but also seek to limit what citizens are permitted to read, watch and share.
Beyond battlefield risks and detention, the statement records a broader erosion of media freedom across the OSCE region. It highlights online abuse, particularly against women journalists, tighter state censorship, financial strain on media organisations, and the effect of disinformation on public trust. It also notes added pressure from new technologies, including AI, which compound existing verification and trust problems. Referring to the recent report of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, the statement says these pressures take different forms across the region but amount to a sustained attack on media freedom. Its closing request to states is practical rather than ceremonial: protect those reporting from conflict, support independent media, uphold the Representative's mandate and reduce impunity for crimes against journalists.