Journalism

• More journalists and media workers were killed in 2025 than in any other year since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began collecting data more than three decades ago.
• This is the second consecutive year-on-year record for press deaths.
• Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings in both 2025 and 2024.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992.

In this episode of the Cuba Analysis Podcast, Helen Yaffe and Nina Blodau talk to Alan MacLeod about the Trump administration’s use of propaganda, misinformation and psychological warfare to facilitate regime change in Cuba and Venezuela. MacLeod is a researcher and investigative journalist for MintPress News, and author of ‘Bad News from Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting’, based on his PhD thesis.

Note - I authored this piece, any and all criticism/feedback is welcomed!

Note - I authored this piece, any and all criticism/feedback is welcomed!

Ricardo Vaz
November 19, 2025

Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21, 1/22/20). Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers.

Despite Washington ominously amassing naval assets and issuing overt threats against Caracas, Western journalists often talk of “tensions” between the two countries (Fox, 11/17/25; ABC, 11/18/25), or even a “showdown” (Wall Street Journal, 10/9/25; Washington Post, 10/25/25). This is conceptually similar to the framing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a “conflict” with Hamas (FAIR.org, 12/8/23), except in this case the media does not have an equivalent of October 7 to rationalize all the atrocities by the US and its allies.

A relentless crackdown in Azerbaijan has eradicated any semblance of independent media from the authoritarian country. As President Ilham Aliyev casts critical journalists as enemies of the state, they continue to try to hold power to account – from exile, or even from behind bars.