WEB DESK
Even as media persons in in Pakistan are facing threat from extremist groups, Islamist organisations and the country’s intelligence agencies, yet media in Pakistan is among freest in Asia, according to a report released by Reporters Without Borders in Washington on Wednesday.
Reporters Without Borders, the group, better known by its French acronym RSF which formulated the report, noted that media in Pakistan were “among the freest in Asia” in covering “political squabbles”.
It ranked Pakistan 147th out of 180 countries in its latest world rankings for press freedom. This is a 12-place gain from the previous year, when Pakistan was ranked 159th.
Pakistan scored 48.52 out of 100 points on the global score for freedom, which is a gain of 1.94 points from the previous year, when Pakistan scored 50.46 points.
RSF also placed militant groups and intelligence agencies who threatened Pakistani journalists on its list of “predators of press freedom”.
The report once again placed India in the bottom third of its freedom index “because of the number of journalists killed and the impunity for crimes of violence against the media”.