Nicaragua was positioned, for the second consecutive year, as the Latin American country with the worst score in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Classification. The country is in 168th place, out of 180 nations evaluated, according to the index, released on Thursday, April 30, 2026.
“In Nicaragua, the media landscape is simply in ruins, the victim of systematic repression and a permanent deterioration in the conditions for practicing the profession,” RSF highlights in its 2026 World Ranking.
Nicaragua is “at the bottom of the regional table,” surpassed by countries like Cuba (160) and Venezuela (159), “where press freedom remains at its lowest level,” according to the organization.
For RSF, it is “worrying” that there is “a tendency” in Latin America to replicate some “traditional forms of censorship” that prevail in Nicaragua, such as state repression and direct attacks on journalists and media outlets.
“In a region like the American continent, marked by violence against the press, instead of protecting journalists, governments threaten them,” warns RSF.
Governments direct attacks on the press
As is happening in Nicaragua, under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, several governments on the American continent have directed their attacks towards the media.
The organization emphasizes that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, “turned regular attacks on the press and journalists into a systematic practice.” A fact that relegated the country to 64th place in the ranking, after falling seven positions.
El Salvador maintained its downward trend and was ranked 143, which represents a loss of 74 positions since President Nayib Bukele came to power in 2019.
While Ecuador registered the biggest drop in the region, dropping 31 positions to 125th place after the murders of journalists in the last year.
Peru, which was also marked by the murder of four journalists in 2025, lost 14 positions in the 2026 ranking and was ranked 144.
Mexico obtained 122nd place and “is the country in the region with one of the worst scores in the security indicator, only negatively surpassed by Nicaragua,” notes RSF.
More than half in a “difficult” or “very serious” situation
According to RSF, for the first time in 25 years of the World Press Freedom Index, more than half of the world’s countries are in a “difficult” or “very serious” situation.
“Freedom of information has been deteriorating and the outlook is gradually becoming darker,” the organization warns. “Journalists continue to be killed or imprisoned for their work, but the tactics of attacking press freedom are changing,” he adds.
RSF measures the state of press freedom in the world based on five indicators: political, legal, economic, social, and safety of journalists. Between 2025 and 2026, the legal indicator fell the most, deteriorating in more than 60% of the countries, that is, in 110 of the 180.
The organization values that “the expansion of the scope of defense and national security secrecy has become a means to prohibit the coverage of issues of general interest in numerous countries. This trend, highlighted in authoritarian regimes, has spread to democracies and is accompanied by an abusive use of laws against journalists, in the name of the fight against terrorism.”
Among the regimes closed to the press, “Russia has become a specialist in the use of laws against terrorism, separatism or extremism in order to restrict freedom of information, RSF warns you. These techniques of instrumentalization of national security measures “are also observed in neighboring Belarus, Burma, Nicaragua and Egypt,” they emphasize.
