[grc] Fwd: [WUNRN] World Press Freedom Index - Analysis & Country Rankings

Tue Jul 2 21:36:52 PDT 2019

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Date: Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 2:06 PM
Subject: [WUNRN] World Press Freedom Index - Analysis & Country Rankings
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WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

Reporters Without Borders

https://rsf.org/en/2019-world-press-freedom-index-cycle-fear

*Website with World Press Freedom 2019 COUNTRY RANKINGS for 180 nations:*

https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table

[image:
https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/styles/rsf_full/public/visuel_cp_home5_0.png?itok=Kj9nkjgZ&timestamp=1555526645]

The 2019 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders
(RSF) shows how hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence,
contributing to an increase in fear. The number of countries regarded as
safe, where journalists can work in complete security, continues to
decline, while authoritarian regimes continue to tighten their grip on the
media.

The RSF Index, which evaluates the state of journalism in 180 countries and
territories every year, shows that an intense climate of fear has been
triggered — one that is prejudicial to a safe reporting environment. The
hostility towards journalists expressed by political leaders in many
countries has incited increasingly serious and frequent acts of violence
that have fueled an unprecedented level of fear and danger for journalists.

“*If the political debate slides surreptitiously or openly towards a civil
war-style atmosphere, in which journalists are treated as scapegoats, then
democracy is in great danger*,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire
said. “*Halting this cycle of fear and intimidation is a matter of the
utmost urgency for all people of good will who value the freedoms acquired
in the course of history.*”

Norway is ranked first in the 2019 Index for the third year running while
Finland (up two places) has taken second place from the Netherlands (down
one at 4th), where two reporters who cover organized crime have had to live
under permanent police protection. An increase in cyber-harassment caused
Sweden (third) to lose one place. In Africa, the rankings of Ethiopia (up
40 at 110th) and Gambia (up 30 at 92nd) have significantly improved from
last year’s Index.

Many authoritarian regimes have fallen in the Index. They include Venezuela
(down five at 148th), where journalists have been the victims of arrests
and violence by security forces, and Russia (down one at 149th), where the
Kremlin has used arrests, arbitrary searches and draconian laws to step up
the pressure on independent media and the Internet. At the bottom of the
Index, both Vietnam (176th) and China (177th) have fallen one place,
Eritrea (up 1 at 178th) is third from last, despite making peace with its
neighbour Ethiopia, and Turkmenistan (down two at 180th) is now last,
replacing North Korea (up one at 179th).

[image:
https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/Capture%20d%E2%80%99%C3%A9cran%202019-04-15%20%C3%A0%2018.29.48.png]

Only 24 percent of the 180 countries and territories are classified as
“good” (coloured white on the Press Freedom Map) or “fairly good” (yellow),
as opposed to 26 percent last year. As a result of an increasingly hostile
climate that goes beyond Donald Trump’s comments, the United States (48th)
has fallen three places in this year’s Index and the media climate is now
classified as “problematic” (orange). Never before have US journalists been
subjected to so many death threats or turned so often to private security
firms for protection. Hatred of the media is now such that a man walked
into the *Capital Gazette *newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, in June 2018
and opened fire, killing four journalists and one other member of the
newspaper’s staff. The gunman had repeatedly expressed his hatred for the
paper on social networks before ultimately acting on his words.

Threats, insults and attacks are now part of the “occupational hazards” for
journalists in many countries. In India (down two at 140th), where critics
of Hindu nationalism are branded as “anti-Indian” in online harassment
campaigns, six journalists were murdered in 2018. Since the election
campaign in Brazil (down three at 105th), the media have been targeted by
Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters on both physically and online.

*Courageous investigative reporters*

In this climate of widespread hostility, courage is needed to continue
investigating corruption, tax evasion or organized crime. In Italy (up 3 at
43rd), interior minister and League party leader Matteo Salvini suggested
that journalist Roberto Saviano’s police protection could be withdrawn
after he criticized Salvini, while journalists and media are subjected to
growing judicial harassment almost everywhere in the world, including
Algeria (down 5 at 141st) and Croatia (up 5 at 64th).

Abusive judicial proceedings may be designed to gag investigative reporters
by draining their financial resources, as in France or in Malta (down 12 at
77th). They could also result in imprisonment, as in Poland (down 1 at
59th), where *Gazeta Wyborcza*’s journalists are facing possible jail terms
for linking the head of the ruling party to a questionable construction
project, and in Bulgaria (11th), where two journalists were arrested after
spending several months investigating the misuse of EU funds. In addition
to lawsuits and prosecutions, investigative reporters are liable to be the
targets of every other kind of harassment whenever they lift the veil on
corrupt practices. A reporter’s house was set on fire in Serbia (down 14 at
90th), while journalists were murdered in Malta, Slovakia (down 8 at 35th),
Mexico (down 3 at 144th) and Ghana (down 4 at 27th).

The level of violence used to persecute journalists who aggravate
authorities no longer seems to know any limits. Saudi columnist Jamal
Khashoggi’s gruesome murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October
sent a chilling message to journalists well beyond the borders of Saudi
Arabia (down 3 at 172nd). Out of fear for their survival, many of the
region’s journalists censor themselves or have stopped writing altogether.

Biggest deterioration in supposedly better regions

Of all the world’s regions, it is the *Americas **(North*
<https://rsf.org/en/rsf-index-2019-institutional-attacks-press-us-and-canada>
* and **South*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-authoritarianism-and-disinformation-worsen-situation-latin-america>
*) *that has suffered the greatest deterioration (3.6 percent) in its
regional score measuring the level of press freedom constraints and
violations. This was not just due to the poor performance of the United
States, Brazil and Venezuela. Nicaragua (114th) fell 24 places, one of the
biggest in 2019. Nicaraguan journalists covering protests against President
Ortega’s government are treated as protesters and are often physically
attacked. Many had to flee abroad to avoid being jailed on terrorism
charges. The Western Hemisphere also has one of the world’s deadliest
countries for the media: Mexico, where at least ten journalists were
murdered in 2018. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s installation as president
has reduced some of the tension between the authorities and media, but the
continuing violence and impunity for murders of journalists led RSF to
refer the situation to the International Criminal Court in March.

The *European Union and Balkans*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-has-dam-burst-europe> registered the
second biggest deterioration (1.7 percent) in its regional score measuring
the level of constraints and violations. It is still the region where press
freedom is respected most and which is, in principle, the safest, but
journalists are nonetheless exposed to serious threats: to murder in Malta,
Slovakia and Bulgaria (111th); to verbal and physical attacks in Serbia and
Montenegro (down 1 at 104th); and to an unprecedented level of violence
during the Yellow Vest protests in France (down 1 at 32nd). Many TV crews
did not dare cover the Yellow Vest protests without being accompanied by
bodyguards, and others concealed their channel’s logo. Journalists are also
being openly stigmatized. In Hungary (down 14 at 87th), officials in Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán’s party Fidesz continue to refuse to speak to
journalists who are not from media that are friendly to Fidesz. In Poland,
the state-owned media have been turned into propaganda tools and are
increasingly used to harass journalists.

Although the deterioration in its regional score was smaller, the *Middle
East*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-middle-easts-journalists-deliberately-targeted>
* and **North Africa*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-harassing-north-africas-journalists> region
continues to be the most difficult and dangerous for journalists. Despite a
slight fall in the number of journalists killed in 2018, Syria (174th)
continues to be extremely dangerous for media personnel, as does Yemen
(down 1 at 168th). Aside from wars and major crises, as in Libya (162nd),
another major threat hangs over the region’s journalists – that of
arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Iran (down 6 at 170th) is one of the
world’s biggest jailers of journalists. Dozens of journalists are also
detained in Saudi Arabia, Egypt (down 2 at 163rd) and Bahrain (down 1 at
167th), many of them without trial. And when they are tried, the
proceedings drag on interminably, as in Morocco (135th). The one exception
to this gloomy picture is Tunisia (up 15 at 97th), which has seen a big
fall in the number of violations.

*Africa*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-big-changes-press-freedom-sub-saharan-africa>
 registered the smallest deterioration in its regional score in the 2019
Index, but also some of the biggest changes in individual country rankings.
After a change of government, Ethiopia (110th) freed all of its detained
journalists and secured a spectacular 40-place jump in the Index. And it
was thanks to a change of government that Gambia (up 30 at 92nd) also
achieved one of the biggest rises in this year’s Index. But new governments
have not always been good for journalists. Tanzania (down 25 at 118th) has
seen unprecedented attacks on the media since John “Bulldozer” Magufuli’s
installation as president in 2015. Mauritania (down 22 at 94th) also fell
sharply, in large part because the blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed
Mkhaitir is being held incommunicado though he should have been freed more
than a year and a half ago, when his death sentence for apostasy was
commuted to a jail term. In this continent of contrasts, bad situations
have continued unchanged in some countries: the Democratic Republic of
Congo (154th) was again the country where RSF registered the most
violations in 2018, while Somalia (164th) continued to be Africa’s
deadliest country for journalists.

The *Eastern Europe and Central Asia*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-press-freedom-index-glimmers-hope-amid-overall-decline-eastern-europe-and-central-asia>
region
continues to rank second from last in the Index, the position it has held
for years, despite an unusual variety of changes at the national level and
a slight improvement in its regional score. Some of the indicators used to
calculate the score improved, while others deteriorated. Of the latter, it
was the legal framework indicator that worsened most. More than half of the
region’s countries are still ranked near or below 150th in the Index. The
regional heavyweights, Russia and Turkey, continue to persecute independent
media outlets. The world’s biggest jailer of professional journalists,
Turkey, is also the world’s only country where a journalist has been
prosecuted for their Paradise Papers reporting. In this largely ossified
region, rises are rare and deserve mention. Uzbekistan (up 5 at 160th) has
ceased to be coloured black (the mark of a “very bad” situation) after
freeing all the journalists who were jailed under the late dictator, Islam
Karimov. In Armenia (up 19 at 61st), the “velvet revolution” has loosened
the government’s grip on TV channels. The size of its rise was facilitated
by the fact that this is a very volatile part of the Index.

With totalitarian propaganda, censorship, intimidation, physical violence
and cyber-harassment, the *Asia-Pacific*
<https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-asia-pacific-press-freedom-impacted-political-change>region
continues to exhibit all of the problems that can beset journalism and,
with a virtually unchanged regional score, continues to rank third from
last. The number of murdered journalists was extremely high in Afghanistan
(121st), India and Pakistan (down 3 at 142nd). Disinformation is also
becoming a big problem in the region. As a result of the manipulation of
social networks in Myanmar, anti-Rohingya hate messages have become
commonplace and the seven-year jail sentences imposed on two *Reuters
*journalists
for trying to investigate the Rohingya genocide was seen as nothing out of
the ordinary. Under China’s growing influence, censorship is spreading to
Singapore (151st) and Cambodia (down 1 at 143rd). In this difficult
environment, the 22-place rises registered by both Malaysia (123rd) and
Maldives (98th) highlight the degree to which political change can
radically transform the climate for journalists, and how a country’s
political ecosystem can directly affect press freedom.

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