Peace not economic prosperity guarantees press freedom - is the lesson from this year’s Press Freedom Index compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders.
The 2008 Press Freedom Index released in October ranks 173 countries in the period September 2007 to September 2008. Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Myanmar and Cuba are the bottom five while Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Estonia and Finland take the top five positions.
Reporters Without Borders reports that “the economic disparities among the top 20 are immense. Iceland’s per capita GDP is 10 times Jamaica’s. What they have in common is a parliamentary democratic system, and not being involved in any war.”
According to Reporters Without Borders, in today’s post 9/11 world “destabilised and on the defensive, the leading democracies are gradually eroding the space for freedoms… the economically most powerful dictatorships arrogantly proclaim their authoritarianism… (while) religious and political taboos are taking greater hold by the year in countries that used to be advancing down the road of freedom.”
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