TLDR: On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (November 2, 2025), the United Nations highlighted the alarming rise of AI-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) targeting women journalists. Threats like deepfakes, gendered disinformation, and harassment are silencing women in media, with 73% reporting online abuse. The UN calls for urgent action from governments, tech platforms, and newsrooms to protect journalists and ensure justice.
The global community marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (IDEI) on November 2, 2025, with a stark focus on the escalating threats faced by women journalists, particularly those amplified by artificial intelligence. Under the theme ‘Chat GBV: Raising Awareness on AI-facilitated Gender-Based Violence against Women Journalists,’ UNESCO and other international bodies underscored how digital transformation, while offering new opportunities, has also given rise to heightened risks for women in public-facing roles.
Artificial intelligence tools are increasingly being weaponized to perpetrate technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). This includes the spread of gendered disinformation, intrusive surveillance, malicious deepfakes, and various forms of online harassment. These AI-driven attacks are designed not only to humiliate and discredit but ultimately to silence women journalists, impacting their credibility, safety, and voice. According to a UNESCO study, a staggering 73 percent of women journalists surveyed have faced online threats, intimidation, or insults related to their work. More broadly, 58 percent of young women and girls globally have reported experiencing harassment on social media platforms.
The consequences are profound: targeted women often withdraw from critical reporting, leading editors to steer them away from investigative work. This results in crucial stories on corruption, gender-based violence, and environmental crimes remaining untold, thereby eroding press freedom and public access to vital information.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized that impunity for crimes against journalists is ‘an assault on press freedom, an invitation to further violence, and a threat to democracy itself.’ He urged governments to ‘investigate every case, prosecute every perpetrator, and ensure that journalists can do their jobs freely everywhere.’
Beyond the threats, the role of AI in journalism is complex. A Thomson Reuters Foundation report from 2025 indicated that over 80% of surveyed journalists are actively embracing AI tools in their work, with nearly half integrating them into daily workflows. However, this adoption comes with challenges, including a lack of awareness, insufficient training, and concerns about the accuracy of AI-generated content.
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Stakeholders are calling for a multi-faceted approach to tackle this growing crisis. This includes implementing gender-sensitive safety protocols in newsrooms, providing digital hygiene training, establishing rapid response teams for harassment, and ensuring access to legal and mental health support for journalists. Furthermore, technology platforms, which often profit from user engagement, are being urged to take greater accountability for how their algorithms and moderation policies enable or fail to prevent abuse. The message is clear: digital spaces must be made safe for those who gather and report the news, and justice for crimes against journalists must be non-negotiable.
