Media freedom is in a “very critical state of affairs” in a report variety of nations, Reporters With out Borders has declared
Journalists are dealing with threats and hostility in additional nations than ever earlier than, based on this yr’s World Press Freedom Index. Nevertheless, the report condemns non-Western governments for clamping down on press freedom, whereas ignoring violations within the EU and North America.
Printed yearly by Reporters With out Borders, the World Press Freedom Index analyzes authorized and bodily threats to journalists to rank the extent of press freedom in 180 nations.
This yr’s index describes the state of affairs in 31 nations as “very critical,” up from 28 final yr. Solely in eight nations is the state of affairs described as “good,” a quantity unchanged since final yr.
Norway took first place within the 2023 index for the seventh yr in a row, adopted by Eire in second and Denmark in third. 9 of the highest ten nations are EU states, whereas various distinguished murders and the continued closure of native information shops introduced the US down from forty second place to forty fifth. Canada took fifteenth place, whereas the UK got here in twenty sixth.
The most important non-Western powers – Russia, China, and India – all positioned under a hundred and sixtieth, as did Iran, Saudi Arabia, and far of the Center East and Asia. Nevertheless, whereas Reporters With out Borders positioned Russia in 164th place for censoring tales about its army and limiting international media shops, it elevated Ukraine from 106th place final yr to 79th this yr – increased than Greece and Serbia and 5 locations behind Hungary.
The index describes Ukraine as “the entrance line of resistance towards the growth of the Kremlin’s propaganda system,” and makes no point out of Kiev’s outright banning of opposition media, which was condemned final yr by the European Federation of Journalists. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who banned Russian information networks in 2021, enacted a regulation in December giving his authorities the ability to high-quality, censor, or block all broadcast, print, or on-line media shops in Ukraine.
The European Union’s blanket ban on Russian shops like RT and Sputnik can be omitted from the group’s report. Additional restrictions on Russian media in particular person European nations are additionally omitted. For instance, Estonia positioned eighth on the listing, and was criticized just for the web “cyberbullying of journalists,” and never for blocking entry to 53 web sites utilized by the nation’s sizable Russian minority to look at banned Russian TV channels.
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