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Report: Pressure on Balkan Media Persists
Skopje | 02 July 2009 |
Their Freedom of the Press 2009 survey notes that politics and businesses often interfere with the free work of journalists in the region.
Of 195 countries included in the global study, only Greece, ranked 63rd, is a Balkan state marked as a country with a free media. All others in the region are designated as “partly free”.
Bulgaria follows in 76th place, and then Montenegro in 78th and Croatia in 81st. Serbia is 83rd. Romania is ranked 92nd followed by Macedonia and Bosnia which share 98th place. Albania is last from the region in 101st place while Kosovo was not included.
"Several countries in the Balkans, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Croatia, showed negative trends [in 2008] due to increased physical threats and harassment of journalists" The survey reads."Both Bulgaria and Croatia suffered rare murders of media workers, while the general level of intimidation and violence rose in all three countries".
Of 195 countries surveyed, 70 are marked as free, 61 as partly free and 64 as not free.
The top places in the ranking are reserved for Iceland, Finland and Norway, while at the bottom are countries like North Korea, Burma and Turkmenistan.
Released in advance of World Press Freedom Day May 3, the Freedom of the Press 2009 report shows a seventh straight year of decline in global media freedom. Particularly worrisome are trends in East Asia, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and North Africa, the report notes.
(Reporting by Sinisa-Jakov Marusic)
2009-07-02 17:51:01