Reporters Without Borders rates press freedom in region

Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontieres (RSF), an international media watchdog NGO, has published its second world press freedom ranking, with countries of the central African region ranking from medium to poor. "This ranking measures the state of press freedom in the world," RSF said in a statement issued on Monday. "It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts undertaken by the state to respect and ensure respect for this freedom." Of the 166 nations surveyed, the Republic of Congo was ranked 63rd, followed closely by Tanzania in 70th position. Further down the list, Burundi placed 92nd, while the Central African Republic placed 107th and Rwanda placed 112th. The Democratic Republic of the Congo found itself among the 50 countries "that respect press freedom least", scoring 127th on the RSF ranking. Calling press freedom a "victim of war in Africa", RSF said that the three countries that had fallen most since last year's ranking were Cote d'Ivoire (137th), Liberia (132nd) and Guinea-Bissau (118th). "Local and foreign journalists were exposed to the violence of the warring parties in Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia, while the military closed down news media in Guinea-Bissau," RSF said. As in 2002, RSF said the "most catastrophic situation" was to be found in Asia, with eight countries in the bottom ten: North Korea, Burma, Laos, China, Iran, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and Bhutan. Second from last in the ranking, RSF said Cuba was "the world's biggest prison for journalists", while the US and Italy were given relatively low rankings. To compile its ranking, RSF asked journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists to fill out a questionnaire evaluating respect for press freedom in a particular country. It said this ranking was a "snapshot" of the situation between 1 September 2002 and 1 September 2003, and noted that it did not look at human rights violations in general, just press freedom violations. RSF said it had taken account not only of abuses attributable to the state but also those by armed militias, clandestine organisations or pressure groups that could "pose a real threat to press freedom". However, RSF cautioned that "in no case" should its ranking be viewed as an indication of the quality of the press in the countries concerned. "RSF defends press freedom, without taking a position on the quality of the editorial content of the news media," it said. "No account was taken of any breaches of professional ethics or codes of conduct." [For the complete report, available in English, French and Spanish, go to www.rsf.org]