The Paris based group ‘Reporters sans frontiers’ has recently published its 2008 list of its annual ranking of press freedoms around the world.

The 2008 rankings are based on events between 1 September 2007 and 1 September 2008 and, as in previous years, asses violations targeting journalists (murders, imprisonment, physical attacks, and threats among others) and general news media (as in censorship, confiscation, searchers, and harassment). The rankings also factor in financial pressures facing media. They do not, however, consider journalistic quality.

The lower a number (which is, I guess, 1 or 0; I could not find out on their site) a nation gets the higher the degree of press freedom there.

Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway tied for first place with a score of 1.50. The United States was ranked 36th along with five other nations including South Africa and Spain.

The worst rankings of 171, 172 ans 173 went to Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, respectively.

The report noted some peculiar traits of tyrants and others equally tyrannical but no so unique in their oppression. “In Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisia (143rd), Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya (160rd), Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus (154th), Bashar el-Assad’s Syria (159e) and Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s Equatorial Guinea (156th), the leader’s ubiquitous portrait on the streets and front pages of the newspapers is enough to dispel any doubt about the lack of press freedom. Other dictatorships do without a personality cult but are just as suffocating. Nothing is possible in Laos (164th) or Saudi Arabia (161st) if it does not accord with government policy.”

What is the main indicator of press freedom? Peace not economic prosperity, according to RSF.

Image Credit: Bp0.blogger