Albania climbs 6 spots in World Press Freedom Index

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times April 28, 2017 09:50

Albania climbs 6 spots in World Press Freedom Index

TIRANA, April 26 - Albania has climbed six spots to 76th position in Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) latest global report on press freedom, the non-governmental organisation said Wednesday.

In regional comparison, Albania ranked better than Kosovo (82nd), Montenegro (106th), Bulgaria (109th) and Macedonia (111th) but worse than Serbia (66th), Bosnia (65th), Croatia (74th), Romania (46th), and Slovenia (37th), the World Press Freedom Index 2017 showed.

Kosovo had the biggest rise in its rankings, by eight spots.

The 2017 World Press Index, index includes a world map in which countries are categorized by different colors depending on the situation of press freedom there: white indicates "good," yellow "fairly good," orange "problematic," red "bad," and black indicates "very bad."

The press rights group based in Paris warned that media freedoms in Balkan countries is diminishing significantly and that Serbia and Croatia registered the worst decline over the past year. The report noted an erosion in the rule of law, particularly in Macedonia.

The watchdog known by its French initials RSF. warned that journalism is at a tipping point and the world map is getting darker, as roughly 21 countries are now colored black on the press freedom map, and 51 are colored red. Reporters without Borders said that the media freedom situation has worsened in nearly two-thirds of the 180 countries covered in the index.

The report blamed several democracies for falling into “the obsession of surveillance and violations of the right to confidentiality of sources.”

Media freedom is at risk in 72 countries, including Russia, India and China while Norway ranked in the first place as the world’s freest media.

The World Press Freedom Index is published annually since 2012. It measures the level of freedom available to journalists in 180 countries using the following criteria – pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative environment, transparency, infrastructure, and abuses.

 

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times April 28, 2017 09:50