We present you with the list of the countries with the freest press in the world. Insider Monkey has come up with a great article again, which is worth reading it. Reporters Without Borders publish annual data on World Press Freedom Index. The data ranks 180 countries based on the freedom journalists are given in reporting. I will shortly outline what the rankings looked like in the past couple of years. Eritrea, North Korea, and Turkmenistan were ranked last in the World Press Freedom Index in 2012. As it was indicated, the totalitarian dictatorship of the President Isaias Afwerki allows no freedom of the press, which is why Eritrea was placed at the bottom of the list. Scandinavian countries were ranked at the top of the list.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked four countries with the freest press in the world from their list.
The first one is Estonia. Freedom of speech as well as freedom of the press are enshrined in the country’s constitution and are generally respected by the government. The media portrays a variety of views with no government interference. In 2015, the Freedom House gave it a freedom score of 16, 0 being the best and 100 being the worst. The second one is Switzerland. In 2016 and 2017 Switzerland occupied the 7th position on the World Press Freedom Index ranking. As the Reporters without Borders indicates, while Switzerland enjoys an impressive level of media freedom, the media in the country is going through turbulent times. Due to the economic crisis, media outlets are either disappearing or being restructured. Now let’s check out Austria. While there were no serious impediments for the media to operate, the fact that the ownership of the media is concentrated in the hands of the few does affect the media’s independence. The freedom of the press is proclaimed in the country’s constitution as well as in the Media Law of 1981. Sweden is the last one on our short list now.In 2017 Sweden was considered to have the 2nd most free press in the world. Sweden was the first country to draft the freedom of press law which celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2016. The law guarantees not only media freedom but also public’s access to state-owned documents.
