Top countries blocking press freedom
Ranked by total measured blocking volume in this category.
- #1severe100591medium.comnytimes.combbc.com
- #2severe97572medium.combbc.comnytimes.com
- #3high56333medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #4high54317medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #5high52306medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #6high51302medium.combbc.comsubstack.com
- #7medium48281bbc.commedium.comsubstack.com
- #8medium47278medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #9medium44260medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #10medium43256medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #11medium43253medium.combbc.comsubstack.com
- #12medium42246medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #13medium41243substack.combbc.comtheguardian.com
- #14medium41240medium.comtheguardian.comsubstack.com
- #15medium40235medium.comsubstack.combbc.com
- #16medium39229substack.commedium.combbc.com
- #17medium35207substack.commedium.combbc.com
- #18medium31183substack.combbc.comtheguardian.com
- #19medium30180substack.commedium.comtheguardian.com
- #20medium28167bbc.comsubstack.comtheguardian.com
How we measure press freedom
The NEWS category covers independent newsrooms, international press, and press-freedom organizations. Blocking these sites silences independent reporting — and is one of the strongest leading indicators of broader internet repression.
Voidly correlates network-level measurements (DNS, TCP, TLS, HTTP) from OONI, CensoredPlanet, IODA, and our own probe network. Each blocked domain is mapped to a Citizen Lab test-list category, and the topic API filters those measurements to category NEWS.
Scoring: within a topic, a country's score is a percentile against the worst country in the same category — so the top-ranked country always scores 100. This avoids cross-topic distortions. Full methodology →
Example domains in this category: bbc.com, reuters.com, aljazeera.com, voanews.com
Embed this on your site
Drop this iframe into any page (newsroom, advocacy site, dashboard) — it auto-updates.
<iframe
src="https://voidly.ai/widget/embed?topic=press-freedom"
width="100%"
height="500"
frameborder="0"
title="Voidly censorship: Press freedom">
</iframe>API access
Free, no auth required, JSON, CC BY 4.0. Cached at the CDN; live every 5 minutes.
curl https://api.voidly.ai/data/censorship-index.json?topic=pressconst res = await fetch(
'https://api.voidly.ai/data/censorship-index.json?topic=press'
)
const data = await res.json()
console.log(data.countries[0])