World Press Freedom Day passed this week. May 3 was the 30th anniversary of the first World Press Freedom Day. But the Washington Post says “there seems little to celebrate,” because there are more government limits on the press worldwide in many countries than there were 30 years ago.

But why should journalists expect freedom to express their opinions when ordinary people increasingly lack free speech? Reports on civil liberties such as the Human Freedom Index show a long‐​term decline of global freedom of expression. After being relatively constant from 2001 to 2006, the global average of freedom of expression fell rapidly from 2006 to 2020.

The decline of free speech has been called a global free speech recession by free speech scholars such as Jacob Mchangama. The decline is broad-based and has occurred in both rich and poor countries (including those with longstanding democratic institutions) and in every region on Earth.

Public opposition to free speech has also risen, and hostility to free speech in the West is greatest among Generation Z. The belief that free speech is harmful to marginalized peoples has proliferated, as Mchangama and Greg Lukianoff have pointed out.