New Delhi: A portrait of Gautam Adani, garlanded and looking upwards wearing a half-smile, joins an array of 33 global figures and companies lined up by Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) in its “2026 Press Freedom Predators List”. Donald Trump, US President, makes it on the list for the first time this year. OpIndia, which features pro-establishment critiques of independent media, is on the list again.The list is RSF’s way to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists on November 2. It profiles 33 “press freedom predators” who targeted journalists and media outlets in 2026. “What do they have in common? A hatred of press freedom,” says RSF.“This tongue-in-cheek awards list highlights the diversity and brutality of the tactics used to stifle journalism,” RSF says.India has two entries – corporate giant Adani features as a representative of his Adani Group, which RSF says is a “predator” of the media for its “use of gag suits”. A journalist the group has been purusing with a criminal defamation case due to articles published recently spent time in a prison in Gujarat.RSF notes that the conglomerate has “11 ongoing civil and criminal proceedings against journalists in India over their reporting on the Adani Group and its subsidiaries”.The RSF report notes that the Adani Group seeks “to criminalise journalism via abusive legal proceedings against media outlets and journalists”, joining other noteworthy personalities with the same goal: Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, making his debut, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.RSF cites from a lawsuit filed by Adani Enterprises on September 6, 2025, to illustrate its point:“[T]he Plaintiff is aggrieved by the actions of certain reporters, activists and organisations, who, with malicious intent, have damaged the Adani Group’s reputation and also cost its stakeholders billions of dollars and also caused massive loss to the image, brand equity and credibility of India’s brand as a country… [T]he Defendants, by aligning with anti-India interests and continuously targeting the Plaintiff’s Infrastructure and energy projects, which are critical to India’s infrastructure and energy security, have disrupted these projects with ulterior motives.” Adani Group is among several others who use lawfare to target jounalists critical of them or their regimes as per the RSF’s 2026 report.And the other Indian entry is media outlet OpIndia, which features this year for “fuelling public hatred through digital attacks on independent journalism, orchestrated or supported by those in power”.In its study of how OpIndia operates, RSF previously noted that between January and September, 2025, it published 91 articles targeting journalists and media outlets, including 43 aimed exclusively at five journalists. “The RSF analysis found that of these 43 articles, 32 were followed by immediate waves of online harassment,” its study found.OpIndia continues to find support from Google AdSense and other sources despite funding withdrawals as a result of the ‘Stop Funding Hate’ campaign, the RSF notes.Anne Bocandé, RSF editorial director, said:OpIndia is a central cog in the systematic harassment of journalists in India, which puts them in very real danger. RSF calls on the Indian justice system to investigate the cyberharassment campaigns linked to these publications. Online platforms, particularly X, must act to remove the hateful content fuelling these attacks. What’s more, it seems that Google AdSense’s continued funding of this site is incompatible with its misconduct. The fight against online harassment is key in protecting journalists and press freedom in India.The profile of OpIndia on the RSF site says, “Between 2023 and 2025, more than 300 publications targeting journalists were published on its website, often fuelling large-scale online harassment campaigns.”OpIndia takes on independent sites, opposition-ruled state governments for their perceived wrongs. Screenshot taken on November 3, 2026.As per the RSF report, the journalists most frequently targeted on OpIndia were: Rajdeep Sardesai, consultant editor and anchor of India Today (36 articles); Arfa Khanum Sherwani, journalist of The Wire (18); Mohammed Zubair,co-founder of the fact-checking website Alt News (15); Mahesh Langa, journalist at The Hindu (13), Ravish Kumar, independent journalist (11); Rana Ayyub, columnist at the Washington Post and Prabir Purkayastha, chief editor of Newsclick (10 each).Independent media outlets, The Wire, NewsClick and Newslaundry, were also among the main targets, RSF found, with 32, 17 and 16 disparaging articles documented, respectively, over this period.Together, such entities (among many others) have contributed to bring India’s media ranking in 2026 to 157th/180 – down six places from last year. As per the RSF rankings, India is part of a sea of red for lack of media freedoms in a vast part of the world:The RSF rankings visualised on a map of the world. India joins a sea of red as per RSF, with freedoms most threatened in India, China, Russia, most of West Asia and parts of South and Central Asia.TheRSF recently provided a reterospective of the last 25 years in terms of media freedoms, in which it noted:For the first time in the history of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, over half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. In 25 years, the average score of all 180 countries and territories surveyed in the Index has never been so low.Donald Trump makes it to RSF’s top worst listAfter narrowly missing the cut last year, US President Donald Trump earned his spot on the 2026 Press Freedom Predators List as a result of his appalling record of attacks on the press after less than two years of his second term.“Since returning to the White House in January 2025,” writes RSF, US President Donald Trump has been “waging an assault on press freedom that is unprecedented in recent US history.”The report lists verbal attacks, legal intimidation and administrative reprisals against media outlets he considers hostile. It says the Trump administration has restricted journalists’ access to government and military institutions, undermined the independence of public broadcasters and weaponised the broadcasting regulator against the press.It cites the President responding to questions regarding the restriction of journalists’ access to the White House, September 2026:“Oh, the ban on the – on the free press. Right? A very simple ban. I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can.”Still, the US ranks 64th/180 on the rankings in 2026 though it has dropped 7 places from last year.‘Familiar faces’Adani Group, OpIndia and Trump feature on different lists within the RSF rankings. While Adani features in the “legal” category, OpIndia features on the “social” category and Trump sits among the political. But these are just three among the 33 RSF features.RSF describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as “ever-present” on its rankings, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega as another “repeat offender” in the “security” category. It also refers to the “dismayingly unassailable” Israeli armed forces, Mexican cartels and Chinese Communist Party.“Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, alongside the Israeli armed forces, has pursued its repressive policy against journalists in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon,” it says.The only woman featured among the 33 is Margarita Simonian, the editor of Russia Today and other Russian outlets.“She has called for the dissolution of RSF and congratulated Alexander Lukashenko after a plane was diverted to arrest the Belarusian blogger Raman Pratasevich,” RSF notes.Earlier, while releasing the World Press Freedom Index, RSF noted that over half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. “In 25 years, the average score of all 180 countries and territories surveyed in the Index has never been so low,” it says.