Let it be known on this Third Day of May, in the Year Two Thousand Twenty-Six, the date proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as World Press Freedom Day since 1993, marking the anniversary of the 1991 Declaration of Windhoek — that the following record is entered in recognition of those who fight for the right to speak, publish, document, and witness, at personal cost and against the machinery of state suppression. Whereas the Committee to Protect Journalists reports 330 journalists imprisoned globally in 2025, the fifth consecutive year above 300, with one in five reporting torture or beatings in custody, and 61% jailed on anti-state charges; and Whereas the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index records that, for the first time in its history, over half of the world’s countries fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories, and the United States has dropped to 64th out of 180, a decline of seven positions in a single year; and Whereas the current administration of the United States has signed National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 7 (NSPM-7), directing FBI counterterrorism task forces to investigate groups with “anti-fascism beliefs” in 27 locations nationwide, and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented 32 journalists detained and 170+ assaulted in the current term; and Whereas the global rise of authoritarianism has made journalism a life-threatening act in every region of the world — with journalists killed by military strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, targeted by drone attacks in Ukraine, imprisoned in Myanmar, Russia, and China, and surveilled, detained, and deported during immigration enforcement operations in cities across the United States, including Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and the southern border; and Whereas the American newsroom itself is under structural assault: since 2005, nearly 3,500 newspapers have closed, more than 270,000 newspaper jobs have been eliminated, and 50 million Americans now live in news deserts with limited or no access to local journalism — a crisis driven in significant part by hedge funds such as Alden Global Capital, which, as documented in the PBS documentary film Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink (2023), have purchased newspapers as distressed assets and gutted them for profit, leaving communities without their voice and democracy without its check on power; and Whereas journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the United States Constitution, enshrined in the First Amendment as the freedom of the press — a protection granted not as a privilege to journalists but as a right belonging to the people, recognizing that self-governance requires an informed public and that the press serves as an indispensable check on the power of the state; and Whereas the right to speak, to publish, to document, and to witness is not granted by governments but is inherent to human dignity, and those who exercise this right under threat do so not for personal gain but in service to the public record; Now, therefore, on this World Press Freedom Day, the Third of May, Two Thousand Twenty-Six, this proclamation is entered into the record in recognition of service to the free press, at personal cost and in the face of state power, as defined by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1991 Declaration of Windhoek.