Press Freedom: Balkan States Still 'Partly Free'

The annual report noted the decline of press freedom globally for the eighth year in a row, while some states in the Western Balkans registered small setbacks and most saw slight improvements to their scores.

Freedom House ranks countries' level of press freedom based on legal, political, and economic criteria.

The legal criteria concern the country's laws and regulations that "could influence media content and the government’s inclination to use these laws and legal institutions to restrict the media’s ability to operate."

Political criteria, meanwhile, involve the evaluation of the degree of political control over media content in the country.

Economic criteria focus on the structure of media ownership, assessing elements including the concentration of ownership, and the costs of establishing media.

The 2010 report did note some changes in the region that includes Western Balkan countries.

Croatia's score "fell from 38 to 40 due to the removal of and legal action against journalists covering war crimes, organized crime, and corruption. There was also less diversity due to rising concentration of private media ownership."

"Improvements were noted in several countries [in the Central and Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union] region, including Bulgaria and Ukraine, primarily due to fewer cases of physical attacks and harassment, as well as greater editorial and ownership diversity," the report notes.

"The score improvement for Serbia in 2009 reflected the fact that Kosovo was scored separately for the first time in this edition of the survey."

Western Balkans countries were ranked as follows in this year's global report: Bulgaria: 76, Serbia: 78, Montenegro: 80, Croatia: 85, Romania: 88, Macedonia: 94, Bosnia: 97, Albania: 102, Kosovo: 108.