Media self-censorship

How this is measured

Asks whether journalists routinely avoid subjects that would embarrass or anger the government. It captures the pressure that never has to be applied, which is why it often falls a year or two before censorship and harassment do — and why it is the hardest of the three to fake. Because it is coded by country experts and then put through a measurement model, every value is an estimate with a credible interval around it. V-Dem publishes those intervals; this site shows only the point estimate, so how firm any single number is cannot be read off the screen. The intervals are wider where fewer experts coded a country and in the earlier centuries, which is exactly where the long series is most tempting to read closely.

163 countries and territories have a figure for 2025. This is the most recent year the series covers well; the viewer holds every year from 1789.

Data by year

Source and licence

Other personal statistics