Why Online Attacks on Journalists Go Unpunished

Yesterday, November 2nd, was the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.

Impunity means getting away with it. The figure usually cited is that the large majority of journalist killings are never solved. The person who gave the order almost never faces a court.

That’s the version of impunity this day was created for. There’s a second version that fits alongside it, and it works differently. A journalist can be removed from the internet without anyone committing a recognizable crime. No arrest follows, because there is nothing obvious to arrest someone for.

The Baseline: Killings That Go Unsolved

We reported in August on the deadliest stretch for journalists in Mexico in over a decade. Six were killed in 2026, five of them in just over two months.

The detail that matters most is older. The Committee to Protect Journalists has found that no case of a murdered or disappeared journalist in Mexico this century has led to convictions of both the people who ordered the attack and the people who carried it out. Not one, in over twenty years.

Mexico also runs a federal programme meant to protect journalists at risk. It is currently rejecting roughly 80% of applications, according to a member of its own advisory council.

So the violence rises, the prosecutions don't follow, and the protection system turns people away. That is impunity in its clearest form.

The Digital Version Has No Mechanism

Now the part that gets less coverage. In May we covered a campaign that deleted journalism in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan using fake copyright claims.

Here’s how it worked: Someone filed trademark and copyright complaints from disposable email addresses. They used the names of companies with no connection to the content. One of those names was L'Oréal, the cosmetics company.

Hundreds of posts from two Kazakh outlets came down. An Uzbek journalist's page was blocked after a complaint filed in another journalist's name, using an email address that person had never created.

That journalist reported the fake email to Facebook. He got no reply. Reporters Without Borders asked Meta and YouTube how this was possible. YouTube didn't provide anyone to comment. Meta said it would respond, then missed the deadline.

Now ask the impunity question. Who was charged? Nobody. Nobody was even identified. The complaints came from throwaway accounts. The platforms acted on them automatically. No police force treats this as a case, and it isn't clear which law would cover it. The journalism is gone either way.

When the State Does It, It's Legal

There is a third version, and it is the hardest to challenge.

In September, Turkish authorities blocked 419 social media accounts in three days. The list grew from LGBTI+ organisations to Amnesty International Türkiye, the newspaper Evrensel, women's organisations, and named journalists.

Every account was blocked under the same justification: sharing obscene content. Amnesty International is not an obscene content provider. Neither is a newspaper. The label stayed the same as the targets changed. Those orders came from courts. They were lawful. There’s no crime to prosecute, because the legal system produced the outcome.

The Maldives showed a sharper version in May, when a journalist was jailed for asking a president a question, and a second was jailed for reporting that a gag order existed. Impunity usually describes a failure to enforce the law. Here the law is the instrument.

What Would Actually Change This

I think the useful question on a day like this is narrow. What would make attacking a journalist carry a cost?

For killings, the answer is known and unglamorous. Investigate. Prosecute the people who gave the order, not only the people holding the weapon. Fund protection programmes properly instead of rejecting most applicants.

For digital attacks, the answer starts earlier. A moderation system that removes journalism within minutes of an anonymous complaint, and then ignores the person reporting the fraud, is not a system anyone is accountable for. Reviewing a complaint before acting on it costs money. Not reviewing it costs nothing, unless someone makes it cost something. That’s a regulatory question, and it is a solvable one.

For state censorship through courts, the honest answer is that domestic remedies don't work when the court is the mechanism. What remains is documentation, international pressure, and keeping the material reachable.

None of that is satisfying. It’s still better than the current arrangement, where a journalist can be silenced in four different ways and nobody has broken a rule anyone enforces.