Being able to express your opinion and be informed about the political situation in the country you live in is a big part of the democratic constitution, but apparently, there are 11 countries without freedom of speech or press that don’t exactly care about keeping up with the rest of the world in this term.
To be fair, there is no country where journalists aren’t controlled by governments and politicians. Politicians use their power to prevent some news from being published because of their personal needs and, in order to keep their jobs, journalists have to occasionally comply with the requests received by the government. Still, they are allowed to release all the important facts that are going to influence residents’ lives sometimes in the future, while keeping some names unwritten in their reports.
But imagine living in a country where the only things you are allowed to be informed about were the ones regarding your obligations toward the country you live in, entertainment scheduled in the place you live in, and the political events from other countries, and not being aware of your possible future. Although journalists in other countries working for the national television are forbidden to uncover some small details and scandals regarding the government, they are allowed to share with the audience the most important news. On the other hand, other televisions and private newspapers are allowed to publish whatever they want, although there were some cases when they suffered some more serious consequences in the past. But now, the situation has calmed down a lot and journalists have the opportunity to do their jobs the way they are supposed to.
You need to be entitled to your own opinion and, no matter how big of a dictator some leader wants to be, he has to allow you and other people to express their beliefs and hopes. Have you ever watched Last Week Tonight? If you did, you saw the way he makes fun of Donald Trump in each show. And although Trump seems to have some more extreme measures keeping up his sleeve, I don’t see that John Oliver stopped shooting his show.
But if he had lived in some other country, I can’t even imagine what kind of consequences would he have after releasing the first episode. Although you might think that the lack of freedom of speech and press is related to the third-world and poor countries only, you will be surprised when you see that many countries on this list are actually strong economic and military forces. But, not that surprisingly, the majority of the countries from the list are Asian countries. I think that you can already assume at least the part of the list right now. To see the full list, click on 11 countries without freedom of speech or press and finally realize how happy you actually are being born in the country you live in. No matter how things can get tough, at least you are allowed to trash it and know what will happen tomorrow.
