Journalists in many parts of the world face deteriorating reporting conditions, with a democracy watchdog group noting a sharp decline in global press freedom last year.
In its annual report released yesterday, the group Freedom House said that global press freedom declined last year to its lowest point in more than 10 years.
Only one in seven people live in countries where coverage of political news is strong, journalists’ safety is guaranteed and state meddling in media affairs is minor, Freedom House said.
Freedom House ranks countries as free, partly free or not free. Each country’s score is based on two numerical ratings — from one to seven — for political rights and civil liberties, with one representing the most free and seven the least free.
Of the countries it looked at last year, it found 63, or 32 percent, as free; 71, or 36 percent, as partly free; and 65, or 32 percent, as not free.
The worst offenders on the Freedom House list were: Belarus, Crimea, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Norway, Sweden and Belgium were the highest ranked. The US was ranked 34th on the list of 199 countries and territories assessed.
Taiwan remained unchanged from last year, ranked 47th. It scored a freedom rating of 1.5, its political rights were ranked at one and civil liberties ranked as two.
Freedom House said that one main factor driving the decline was newly passed restrictive laws against the media.
The report cited laws in Russia and Mexico that place new controls on blogs. Physical violence and intimidation of journalists continued to be a problem, especially in places such as Syria and Nigeria.
“Governments used security or antiterrorism laws as a pretext to silence critical voices,” report project manager Jennifer Dunham said.
“Militant groups and criminal gangs used increasingly brazen tactics to intimidate journalists and media owners attempted to manipulate news content to serve their political or business interests,” Dunham said.
Despite the recent diplomatic opening between the US and Cuba, and the release of dozens of political prisoners late last year — the report said that journalists remained behind bars in Cuba last year and official censorship remained pervasive, leaving Cuba as one of the 10 worst offenders on the group’s list.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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