May 20, 2022
Only two countries in the world now have less press freedom than Iran and that is because they are the two countries where all the media are owned by the government.
The annual index published by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that North Korea ranks last with Eritrea next-to-last. Then comes Iran, in 178th place this year. That dropped Iran by four places since last year and allowed Turkmenistan, Myanmar and China, in 175th place, to rise above Iran.
The RSF called 2021 “another tough year for press freedom” in Iran as “the two main leaders accused of abuses and crimes committed against journalists for 30 years, Ebrahim Raisi and Gholam-Hossain Mohseni-Ejai, became, respectively, president of the republic and head of the Iranian judicial system. The result: an increase in arbitrary arrests and convictions, and journalists imprisoned and denied medical care.”
Mohammad Mosaed, an Iranian journalist who won the 2020 press freedom award from the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, told the award ceremony last year, “Telling the truth in Iran is a crime.”
He said, “Speaking the truth is dangerous in my country because the government fears not only the truth itself but also the audacity behind telling the truth.”
Press freedom is defined by the RSF as “the ability of journalists as individuals and collectives to select, produce and disseminate news in the public interest independent of political, economic, legal and social interference and in the absence of threats to their physical and mental safety.”
The countries at the top of the list were Scandinavian with Norway, Denmark and Sweden in first, second and third place. Canada was ranked 19th and the United States 42nd.
RSF said of the United States, “Many of the underlying, chronic issues impacting journalists remain unaddressed by the authorities including the disappearance of local news, the polarization of the media or the weakening of journalism and democracy caused by digital platforms and social networks.”