The war waged by Russia against Ukraine is creating devastating consequences for press freedom in the region, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on May 3 as it released its annual World Press Freedom Index.
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog said reporters have been killed and injured while reporting on the war, including RFE/RL's Vira Hyrych, who died in a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on April 28, and noted massive disinformation and a level of censorship not seen since the Soviet period.
The Russian military has deliberately targeted news sources in territories it occupies and has tried to coerce the local media’s cooperation, RSF said in a news release accompanying its 2022 index, which lists Russia at 155th among a ranking of 180 countries based on its assessment of their media freedom.
“In Russia itself, the government has taken complete control of news and information by establishing extensive wartime censorship, blocking the media, and pursuing noncompliant journalists, forcing many of them into exile,” RSF said.
The country dropped five places from its ranking of 150th last year when RSF downgraded Russia for its crackdown on journalists covering protests in support of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny and the toughening of its law on media as “foreign agents.”
A growing number of media outlets in Russia are being labeled “extremist,” and reading and sharing their content on social networks is subject to criminal prosecution, RSF noted.
The Kremlin also is imposing its vision of the war in Ukraine on some of its neighbors, especially Belarus, which is ranked 153rd in the index. Independent journalists in Belarus continue to be persecuted for their work since the disputed presidential election in August 2020, and more than 20 media workers are languishing in prison in the country.
The diversion of a commercial aircraft in May 2021 to arrest an opposition journalist was another example of the ways that Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has attempted to control media freedom, RSF said.
RSF also noted that Central Asian governments pressure media to provide more “neutral” coverage of the war in Ukraine. In Turkmenistan, ranked 177th, the media -- all controlled by the government -- ignore the war, it said.
The ranking placed Norway at the top for the sixth year in a row. Denmark moved into second place from fourth in 2021, and Sweden held third place.
For the first time, Estonia and Lithuania -- two former communist states -- are among the top 10, ranking fourth and ninth, respectively. Bulgaria, another ex-communist country, is no longer ranked last among European countries. That distinction now belongs to Greece, ranked 108th.
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Bulgaria, which moved up to 91st from 112th, and Moldova, now ranked 40th from 89th last year, stand out this year thanks to changes in their governments and the hope this has brought for improvement in the situation for journalists.
The world’s five worst countries for press freedom are Burma, Turkmenistan, Iran, Eritrea, and North Korea, according to RSF.
This year’s World Press Freedom Index -- released on World Press Freedom Day -- is the 20th published by RSF. Overall, RSF said the index reveals media polarization fueling divisions within democratic countries and polarization at the international level.
This year’s index “highlights the disastrous effects of news and information chaos -- the effects of a globalized and unregulated online information space that encourages fake news and propaganda.”
RSF said that within democratic societies, divisions are growing as a result of the spread of opinion media and the spread of disinformation circuits that are amplified by the way social media functions.
In the United States, which RSF ranks 42nd, media polarization is feeding and reinforcing internal social divisions. But also in countries such as France, ranked 26th, social and political tensions are being fueled by social media and new opinion media.