Press freedom sees worldwide ‘drastic decline’

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on February 13, 2015, on page 8.

PARIS: Media freedom suffered a “drastic decline” worldwide last year in part because of extremist groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram, the watchdog group Reporters without Borders said in its annual evaluation released Thursday.

“There has been an overall deterioration linked to very different factors, with information wars and action by non-state groups acting like news despots,” the head of the Paris-based group, Christophe Deloire, told AFP.

The Reporters without Borders 2015 World Press Freedom Index stated there was an 8 percent increase in violations of freedom of information in 180 countries in 2014 compared to 2013, according to its statistically weighted calculation.

All parties in conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine were waging “a fearsome information war” where media personnel were directly targeted to be killed, captured or pressured to relay propaganda, it said.

The ISIS group, Boko Haram, and criminal organizations in Italy and Latin America all used “fear and reprisals to silence journalists and bloggers who dare to investigate or refuse to act as their mouthpieces,” said the watchdog, known by its French initials RSF.

North Africa and the Middle East contained notable “black holes” – areas controlled by non-state groups in which independent information simply does not exist,” the group said.

“The criminalization of blasphemy endangers freedom of information in around half of the world’s countries,” the report added.

RSF’s ranking put Iran, China, Syria and North Korea among the countries with the very worst levels of press freedom.

Repression of journalists in Ukraine and Turkey during 2014 anti-government protests earned both spots in the table’s bottom quarter.

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