Context:

India has dropped two places on a global press freedom index to be ranked 142nd out of 180 countries in the report prepared by Reporters Without Borders.

About:

Published every year since 2002 by Reporters Sans (Without) Borders (RSF), or Reporters Without Borders, the World Press Freedom Index is an important advocacy tool based on the principle of emulation between states.

The index measure

• The Index ranks 180 countries and regions according to the level of freedom available to journalists.
• It is a snapshot of the media freedom situation based on an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework, and safety of journalists in each country and region.
• It does not rank public policies even if governments obviously have a major impact on their country’s ranking.
• Nor is it an indicator of the quality of journalism in each country or region.

Key-highlights of the index:

• Among the nations with the top ranks are Scandinavian countries Norway, Finland, and Denmark, while countries like North Korea (180), Vietnam (175), and Syria (174) were some of the lowest-ranked.
• India ranked better than its neighbors Pakistan (145) and Bangladesh (151), but worse than Sri Lanka (127) and Nepal (112).
• North Korea: At the lowest rank of 180, North Korea scored the worst in terms of press freedom due to its leader Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime that has kept its citizens in a “state of ignorance”.
• In the year 2020 so far, across the world, 10 journalists have been killed, 229 imprisoned and 116 citizen journalists imprisoned while one media assistant was killed and 14 media assistants imprisoned across the world.