in this year’s index of press freedom calculated by the Paris–based organization Reporters Without Borders.
As last year, Iran is saved from the bottom by the censorial triumvirate of Turkmenistan, North Korea and last place Eritrea.
In those three countries, all of the media are state-owned. So Iran has the distinction of being the least free of any country that allows private ownership of publications. In fact, some countries that impose a total state monopoly on the news are rated as enjoying more press freedom than in the Islamic Republic.
Reporters Without Borders sneered at the Islamic Republic, saying that at least it didn’t fall any lower in the index this year.
“The crackdown on journalists and netizens which occurred just after the disputed re-election of Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad in June 2009 only strengthened in 2010,” it summarized.
Iran was ranked 175th out of 178 countries rated. The United States was ranked 20th and Canada 21st.
The top six countries, all with perfect scores, were: Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.