Trinidad and Tobago drops 13 places in 2026 press freedom index

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

Trinidad and To­ba­go has fall­en 13 places in the 2026 World Press Free­dom In­dex re­leased to­day by Re­porters With­out Bor­ders, de­spite main­tain­ing what the re­port de­scribes as a “good record” and a “vi­brant me­dia land­scape.”

The coun­try is now ranked 32nd out of 180 coun­tries, down from 19th in 2025. Its over­all score al­so de­clined from 79.71 to 74.70, re­flect­ing weak­er per­for­mance across all five in­di­ca­tors.

In 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go ranked 19th glob­al­ly with a score of 79.71, im­prov­ing from 25th in 2024 and emerg­ing as the high­est-ranked coun­try in the Caribbean.

De­spite that stand­ing, Re­porters With­out Bor­ders had al­ready iden­ti­fied struc­tur­al pres­sures af­fect­ing the me­dia en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence, de­pen­dence on ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue, high crime lev­els and a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

The 2026 re­sults show those pres­sures have trans­lat­ed in­to mea­sur­able de­clines across all in­di­ca­tors.

The re­port high­lights what it de­scribes as a “safe­ty para­dox” in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

There were no jour­nal­ists killed or de­tained in 2026, con­tin­u­ing a con­sis­tent trend in re­cent years.

The re­port points to on­go­ing pres­sure linked to the re­la­tion­ship be­tween me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions and po­lit­i­cal ac­tors, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing elec­tion pe­ri­ods.

Be­cause po­lit­i­cal par­ties are ma­jor ad­ver­tis­ing spenders, some me­dia hous­es feel com­pelled to main­tain favourable re­la­tion­ships across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum to se­cure rev­enue.

This dy­nam­ic can lead to less crit­i­cal re­port­ing, as out­lets seek to pro­tect busi­ness in­ter­ests.

The re­port al­so high­lights broad­er so­cio­cul­tur­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing func­tion­al il­lit­er­a­cy, which it says can af­fect pub­lic en­gage­ment with jour­nal­ism and the de­vel­op­ment of the me­dia sec­tor.

Women jour­nal­ists are iden­ti­fied as fac­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate lev­els of ha­rass­ment.

The re­port al­so cites long-stand­ing con­cerns about po­lice cor­rup­tion, which con­tribute to a chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment for jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing sen­si­tive top­ics.

The re­port how­ev­er does not cov­er the loss­es of two me­dia hous­es, LoopTT and the News­day over the past year.

Every cat­e­go­ry mea­sured by Re­porters With­out Bor­ders showed a de­cline:

● Glob­al over­all: 32 (down from 19)

● Po­lit­i­cal: 39 (down from 28)

● Eco­nom­ic: 25 (down from 12)

● Le­gal: 35 (down from 32)

● So­cial: 30 (down from 11)

● Se­cu­ri­ty: 37 (down from 9)

The most sig­nif­i­cant drops were record­ed in the So­cial and Se­cu­ri­ty in­di­ca­tors, where Trinidad and To­ba­go had pre­vi­ous­ly ranked among the top per­form­ers.

Glob­al con­text

Glob­al­ly, Nor­way re­mains ranked first for the 10th con­sec­u­tive year.

The Unit­ed King­dom is ranked 18th, while the Unit­ed States has fall­en to 64th.

Re­porters With­out Bor­ders says press free­dom world­wide is now at its low­est lev­el in 25 years, with less than one per cent of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in coun­tries clas­si­fied as hav­ing a “good” lev­el of press free­dom.

“Year af­ter year, Trinidad and To­ba­go main­tains its good record in terms of free­dom of the press, even though there is still room for im­prove­ment.”