How free is the world’s press?
An index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world has just been published by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running. You can check it out here.
The top 14 countries are all European with all the Scandinavian nations featuring. Some of the recently Communist countries of Europe – such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – score very highly. The UK is 24th. The USA is only 48th.
Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba).