Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF)have just released their Third Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index and, unsurprisingly, Russia finishes near bottom on the list – 140th out of 167. Ukraine and Belarus, both former Soviet states with authoritarian tendencies also scored poorly, coming in at 138th and 144th respectively.
This is what they have to say about Russia:
In Russia (140th), the biased coverage of the tragic hostage crisis in Beslan, in North Ossetia, was a flagrant illustration of the total control exercised by the Kremlin over the national TV stations. Many Russian and foreign journalists were prevented from working and the censorship applied to Chechnya was extended to neighbouring republics. The Agence France-Presse correspondent in the region is still missing, while two journalists were killed in Moscow during the summer, one of them the editor of the Russian version of the US magazine Forbes.
Perhaps the only positive that Russia can take from this report is that last year they were placed an even more dismal 148th.
In complete contrast and providing a stunning example to the rest of the FSU are the Baltic states: Latvia (10th place), Estonia (11th place) and Lithuania (16th place) left major democratic states such as France, the UK and the US trailing in their wake.
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