A new report has revealed a sharp and alarming increase in violence targeting journalists in the United States since Donald Trump returned to the presidency. The data indicates a climate of heightened hostility, with many incidents occurring as reporters cover civil unrest.
A Dramatic Spike in Reported Assaults
According to the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation, there have been 170 assaults on members of the press in 2025 alone, before 16 December. This staggering figure is nearly equivalent to the total number of assaults recorded across the entire preceding three-year period from 2022 to 2024, which stood at 175.
The organisation, which meticulously tracks such incidents, states that most of these attacks involved reporters and photographers allegedly targeted by law enforcement officials. A significant majority occurred while journalists were covering protests against the Trump administration's immigration policies, particularly efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.
Rhetoric, Protests, and a Hostile Environment
Press freedom advocates and academic researchers point to a confluence of factors driving this trend. While journalists inherently face greater risks when covering significant civil unrest, they argue that anti-media rhetoric from the highest levels of government has fostered increased hostility.
President Trump has repeatedly lambasted mainstream US media, baselessly accused outlets of lying, and publicly insulted individual journalists. "When the president models ridicule and delegitimisation, it signals to supporters that journalists are fair targets," explained Lars Willnat, a professor at Syracuse University who studies political polarisation. "That shift matters because violence becomes easier to justify once journalists are seen as political combatants rather than neutral observers."
The foundation's senior reporter, Stephanie Sugars, who authored the report, noted that while a direct causal link to Trump's words is difficult to prove, the "policies and rhetoric of both him and his administration … reflect that hostility towards the press as well and could be seen as condoning other aggressions."
Journalists on the Front Lines: Personal Accounts
The statistics are borne out by harrowing personal testimonies. Nick Stern, a photographer from Los Angeles, suffered serious injuries in two separate incidents this year. In June, while covering an anti-ICE protest in Compton, California, he was allegedly struck by an explosive device fired by an officer despite being clearly identifiable as press and standing well back from a barricade. The casing entered his thigh, requiring emergency surgery and a four-day hospital stay.
"It was completely unjustified," Stern stated. After recovering, he returned to cover another protest in August outside a Los Angeles detention centre, where an officer struck him in the face with a baton after he presented his press ID. Stern has filed lawsuits related to both attacks.
In Chicago, journalist Raven Geary was covering a September protest outside the Broadview detention facility when an ICE officer fired a pepper ball that struck her face, despite her wearing a press pass. "They definitely knew that they were shooting at journalists," Geary said. This incident led to a class-action lawsuit by reporters and protesters, resulting in a federal judge issuing a temporary restraining order in October to protect journalists from unwarranted force.
A Pattern of Violence Amid Political Turmoil
The report highlights specific operations where violence spiked. During "Operation Midway Blitz," an immigration crackdown in Chicago, journalists were assaulted 34 times over six weeks outside a single detention facility in Broadview, Illinois.
Stephanie Sugars emphasised that protests have consistently been the most dangerous places for US journalists since the foundation's incident tracker launched in 2017, a period spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations. However, the current scale of the problem is unprecedented.
Despite the risks, journalists like Nick Stern feel a duty to continue their work. "We'll look back at this as a time when the US went through such turmoil," he said. "It needs to be documented." The foundation verifies all incidents in its tracker through first-person accounts or multiple independent news sources, underscoring the credibility of its alarming findings.
