AMN /
The World Press Freedom Index, released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on 20 April revealed that Journalists and bloggers in India are attacked and anathematized by various religious groups that are quick to take offence.
At the same time, RSF said, it is hard for journalists to cover regions such as Kashmir that are regarded as sensitive by the government.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems indifferent to these threats and problems, and there is no mechanism for protecting journalists”, report observed adding instead, in a desire to increase control of media coverage.
As a whole the report shows that there has been a deep and disturbing decline in respect for media freedom at both the global and regional levels.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), shows that there has been a deep and disturbing decline in respect for media freedom at both the global and regional levels.
Ever since the 2013 index, Reporters Without Borders has been calculating indicators of the overall level of media freedom violations in each of the world’s regions and worldwide. The higher the figure, the worse the situation. The global indicator has gone from 3719 points last year to 3857 points this year, a 3.71% deterioration. The decline since 2013 is 13.6%.
The many reasons for this decline in freedom of information include the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of governments in countries such as Turkey and Egypt, tighter government control of state-owned media, even in some European countries such as Poland, and security situations that have become more and more fraught, in Libya and Burundi, for example, or that are completely disastrous, as in Yemen.