World Press Freedom index
GS PAPER II: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.
Context: In the World Press Freedom index, India has retained the 142 of 180 spot, and thus remained as “one of the world’s most dangerous countries” for journalists.
- The World Press Freedom Index 2021 is published by the international journalism not-for profit body, Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
- It classified India as “bad” for journalism and is termed as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists trying to do their jobs properly.
- The index ranked 180 countries, topped, yet again, by Norway followed by Finland and Denmark, while Eritrea is at the bottom.
- China is ranked 177, and is only above North Korea at 179 and Turkmenistan at 178.
- In the South Asian neighborhood, Nepal is at 106, Sri Lanka at 127, Myanmar (before the coup) at 140, Pakistan at 145 and Bangladesh at 152.
- While, India shares the “bad” classification with Brazil, Mexico and Russia.
- For India, the latest report has blamed an environment of intimidation created by BJP supporters for any critical journalist, who, the report said, is marked as “anti-state” or “anti-national”.
- The report has also highlighted throttling of freedom of expression on social media, and specifically mentioned that in India the “arbitrary nature of Twitter’s algorithms also resulted in brutal censorship.
- The 2021 report “shows that journalism, the main vaccine against disinformation, is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organization.
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