Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday in Washington, UNited States of America that press freedom took a hit in 2014, with two-thirds of surveyed countries ranking worse than the previous year.
Delphine Halgand, the Director of Operations in the US, said every year, the Paris, France-based organisation surveys 180 countries to compile a world press freedom ranking.
Halgand said investigation by the organisation showed eight per cent increase in overall violations of freedom of information in 2014.
Halgand said Syria ranked as 177 on the list and still the most dangerous country for journalists since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011.
He said Finland topped the index for the fifth year in a row as the country enjoying the most unfettered press freedom.
Halgand said this was followed by Norway and Denmark, while the bottom three countries on the list of 180 are Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.
The three also were in 2014.
He said the report attributed the decline in press freedom to non-state groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and Boko Haram in Nigeria, controlling media messages by prohibiting access or worse by kidnapping and murdering journalists.
Halgand said it also included political use of religious censorship as in the case of Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian man sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes after being found guilty of creating a website that insulted Sharia law and religious officials.
He said this also includes the EU’s failure to require that state media maintain independence from powerful politicians.
Halgand said the US fell from third positions to 49th place in this year’s World Press Freedom Index, due in part to pressure placed on the New York Times journalist James Risen to reveal his sources in 2014.
He added: “Governments cannot be allowed to restrict all but officially approved versions of events.
“Last year, the group declared 2013 as the worst year for press freedom in the United States.”
Halgand said it was the year that government convicted Army private Bradley (Chelsea) Manning for leaking government documents and was in pursuit of NSA analyst, Edward Snowden, for disclosing information about government surveillance.
dpa/NAN.
Follow The Eagle Online Channel on WhatsApp
