Sweeping protests around the world
made it an extremely difficult year for the media, and tested
journalists as never before, the annual report into press freedom
reveals.
The
annual report by Reporters Without Borders has been released, showing
the United States fell 27 points on the list due to the many arrests of
journalists covering Occupy Wall Street protests.
The slide in the United States places it just behind Comoros and Taiwan in a group with Argentina and Romania.
Under arrest: Journalists covering Occupy Wall Street protests found themselves a target of authorities
Reporters Without Borders said the
heightened unrest around the world resulted in a significant shake-up of
the group's annual Press Freedom Index, which assesses governments'
commitment to protecting media freedoms.
The
Paris-based non-governmental Reporters Without Borders has named
“crackdown” the word of 2011 in an assessment of global media freedom
during a year in which journalists covering sweeping protests were
tested as never before.
Despite the big changes, some
constants remained. The country with the freest media in the world was
Finland, followed by Norway, Estonia, the Netherlands and Austria.
Eritrea was last, with North Korea just above.
The United States was not alone in the falling grades: Bahrain fell 29 points because of the crackdown in that country.
Egypt and Syria also fell a few points to languish near the bottom of the pack (166) and (176) respectively.
The group judged that Syria, along
with Iran and China, 'seem to have lost contact with reality as they
have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror.'
Pakistan
was the world’s deadliest country for journalists, and Eritrea came in
last in the list of overall press freedom.Syria, where an uprising
against the government has been met with a brutal crackdown that has
left more than 5,000 people dead, received its worst rating ever at 176.
Press freedom? Journalists sit it out in a
hallway as gun-battles continue around the Rixos hotel in Tripoli,
Libya, in August last year
