Reporters Without Borders: Press freedoms "problematic"

Reporteri bez granica

The annual report by the non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which tracks media freedom around the world said that the past year was marked by a growing animosity towards media spurred by political leaders across the world. The report also said that in Croatia, ranked 69th, press freedoms are problematic.

According to their 2018 World Press Freedom Index which ranks countries according to the level of media freedoms, hostility towards the media from political leaders seems no longer limited to authoritarian countries such as Turkey or Egypt, where RSF says “media-phobia” is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused of terrorism, and all those who don’t offer loyalty to the ruling regimes are arbitrarily imprisoned, RSF said in the report published on Wednesday.

“The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is one of the worst threats to democracies,” RSF Secretary-General, Christophe Deloire, said in the report.

The Paris-based RSF said that democratically-elected leaders increasingly view the media as an adversary, rather than part of democracy’s underpinning. As an example, they singled out the United States, which fell again in the Index under President Donald Trump, placing 45th among 180 countries ranked.

“Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters bear heavy responsibility because they undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire,” Deloire added.

In Europe, the regional indicator has worsened the most this year, with four out of five countries which recorded the biggest yearly drop located in Europe – Malta, the Czech Republic, Serbia, and Slovakia.

Croatia moved up five places to 69th and has been categorised as “problematic”, a grouping containing 35 percent out of 180 countries ranked. The report said that although officials of the ruling HDZ-HNS coalition said press freedom was of prime importance, the RSF noted a “growing influence of hate speech, which is proving hard to curb,” and added that politicians have not sufficiently condemned verbal abuse against journalists that is increasing in the public arena.

Globally, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland took the top four places, while North Korea firmly sitting at 180th place.

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