Journalists are no longer only jailed or silenced in court. Increasingly, the legal process itself is designed to push them out of their own countries.
For decades, press freedom monitors tracked a familiar set of tools of repression: imprisonment, physical attacks and outright closure of media outlets. Today, a quieter and more legally sophisticated model is taking hold. Criminal complaints, tax investigations, “foreign agent” registries and trials in absentia are used to make independent reporting so costly, so risky and so exhausting that journalists leave. The courtroom is no longer just where censorship is enforced; it is where exile is manufactured.
The punishment is the process
The 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index shows global press freedom at its lowest level in 25 years. The sharpest deterioration was in the legal indicator, which worsened in more than 60 percent of countries. RSF points to vague national security and disinformation laws, and to the spread of SLAPPs, strategic lawsuits meant to bury journalists in costly litigation, from Bulgaria to Guatemala and even France.
PEN International reached a similar conclusion in its 2026 Americas overview, describing judicial harassment as one of the most common mechanisms used across the region to censor writers and journalists. Its title captures the logic: the punishment is the process. A journalist does not need to be convicted for the system to work. Years of hearings, frozen assets, travel bans, and legal fees do the job.
El Salvador: a case study in how the pipeline works
El Salvador shows how quickly the sequence can unfold. After El Faro published interviews with gang leaders about their alleged relationship with President Nayib Bukele, the outlet warned that prosecutors were preparing arrest warrants against at least seven of its journalists. Ten El Faro reporters left the country. In an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, editor-in-chief Óscar Martínez summed up the choice his newsroom faced: “exile or prison.” (CPJ)
The legal and financial pressure had been building for years. El Faro was already forced to relocate its legal incorporation to Costa Rica in 2023 after money laundering and tax evasion allegations, as the outlet has documented (El Faro English). In May 2025, the Legislative Assembly passed a Foreign Agents Law that requires organizations and individuals receiving foreign funding to register with the government and imposes a 30 percent tax on those donations, as RSF reported. Independent media that depend on international support were suddenly facing a choice between compliance, closure or departure.
The numbers are stark. The Journalists’ Association of El Salvador (APES) estimated that around 40 journalists left the country in a single month. APES itself, one of the country’s leading press freedom organizations, was forced to leave in May 2025. A later report from RSF, APES and ARPAS documented 53 cases of forced exile in six months (Latin America Journalism Review). As APES president Sergio Aráuz described it, journalists were first suffocated by persecution and the threat of prison, then by financial strangulation.
Exile does not end harassment
Leaving the country does not necessarily end the legal pursuit. In Belarus, a 2022 reform to the criminal procedure code introduced “special proceedings” that allow courts to convict people in absentia. CPJ found that more than 60 exiled Belarusian journalists are under investigation or facing charges in cases opened after they left. Many learn about the proceedings only when police visit their relatives or when they find their names on a wanted list. Authorities can seize property and harass family members, which is why most exiled Belarusian journalists work anonymously.
Turkey illustrates a related pattern. RSF says the country, now ranked 163rd out of 180 in the 2026 Index, has become both a refuge for journalists fleeing regional conflicts and a source of exiled reporters. At least 10 journalists working in Turkey fled the country with RSF’s help in the period it examined, and RSF notes that this figure covers only those it assisted (Stockholm Center for Freedom). The figures that are visible are almost certainly an undercount.
Why exile is such an effective form of censorship
Exile is attractive to governments precisely because it looks like a personal decision rather than a state action. No journalist is formally banned, no outlet is formally shut down, and no prison cell is needed. Yet the outcome is the same: the reporter is removed from the communities they cover, cut off from sources and local audiences, and often unable to earn a living from journalism. Newsrooms lose institutional memory. Audiences lose access to investigative work. Others in the profession see what happens and begin to self-censor.
The legal tools involved also give repression a veneer of legitimacy. Governments can point to a statute, a prosecutor or a tax audit and say that the rule of law is being applied. That is why this trend is harder to confront than a blunt act of violence, and why it so often escapes international attention until it is too late.
What needs to change
Press freedom organizations and policymakers should treat judicial harassment and forced exile as part of the same continuum rather than separate problems. That means monitoring pre-trial measures, tax investigations and foreign agent registries as early warning signs, not only convictions and imprisonments. It means anti-SLAPP legislation and independent judicial oversight. It also means practical support for those who leave: emergency funding, legal assistance, safe workspaces and protection against transnational repression for journalists who have reached what should be safety.
A journalist who is forced to flee has not simply changed address. A country has lost a voice, and its citizens have lost a window onto what their government does. Recognizing exile as a form of censorship is the first step toward responding to it.