Press Freedom Index 2009
Over the last year, the press freedom has improved in the United States. The country is on place 20, on a 2009 international ranking by Reporters Without Borders. Europe long set an example in press freedom, but several European nations have fallen significantly in this year’s index. Young democracies in Africa -such as Mali, South-Africa and Ghana-, and the Western hemisphere -Uruguay and Trinidad and Tobago-, are on their way up in de press freedom.
The United States has climbed twenty places in the ranking; it went from place 40 to place 20 in just one year. The presidency of Barack Obama in January brought a new approach in Washington after eight years under President George W. Bush. Reporters Without Borders noted that in the United States, the House of Representatives this year backed legislation to allow journalists to protect their sources, although this has not been voted in the Senate yet. The Obama administration also promised a better access to public information.
For a long time, Europe was head of the ranking, but now the press freedom index’s top 20 is not quite so European. This is the first time since 2002 that only 15 countries of the top 20 are European. Last year, 2008, the top twenty was counting 18 European countries. The European Union member with the lowest ranking is Bulgaria. Since it joined in 2007 the member of the union has been falling steadily, it is now number 68 on the list. Italy fell for the second year and is now on the 49th place. It got the worst ranking of the six original countries that founded the European Union. An explanation for this fall could be the increase of meddling, Il Cavaliere’s harassment of the media, mafia violence against journalists who expose its activity and a bill that that would drastically suppress the media’s ability to publish official phone tab transcripts. France also did not score that high this year, it fell eight points to the 43rd place. This descent is caused by juridical investigations and arrests of journalists and raids on news media, and also by the meddling in the media by politicians, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Israel fell 47 places this year; it landed on number 93. It is the first time that Israel is not at the head of Middle Eastern countries in the Press Freedom Index. The country is falling behind Kuwait at number 60, Lebanon at number 61, and the United Arab Emirates at number 86. Arrests of journalists, their conviction and in some cases even their deportation are the reasons why Israel lost so many places in the list. Iran came from number 166 and dropped to number 172, according to Reporters Without Borders the disputed re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fostered a paranoia about journalists and bloggers. The bad state of the press freedom in Iran is caused by automatic prior censorship, state surveillance of journalists, mistreatment, journalists that are forced to flee the country, illegal arrests and imprisonment.
The country that did the worst in press freedom this year is Eritrea, 175th place. Second and third last countries are North Korea and Turkmenistan. In these three countries the media are so suppressed that they are nearly non-existent. Independent media is not tolerated in Eritrea and 30 journalists are in prison, as many as in China or Iran, but with a much smaller population. “Nobody knows about that country, because you can’t report on what is going on there”, said Clothilde Le Coz, the Washington director of Reporters Without Borders. Eritrean journalists who travel abroad won’t talk, she said, because “they really fear for their lives”.
The Baltic Sea region was shown as the best place for media freedom, with five of the top six nations on the list located there; Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Iris Verhasselt
Sources:
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/report-media-freedoms-shrink-in-iran-rise-in-us-1.1534068
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=109083
http://www.rsf.org/en-classement1003-2009.html
http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=34777
http://www.kosmopolito.org/press-freedom-europe-no-longer-an-example/
http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/20/report-calls-eritrea-worlds-worst-country-for-press-freedom/
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