Lithuania placed 31th in the ranking of media freedom

In the latest World Press Freedom Index, Lithuania has got 31th place among 180 countries from all continents. The ranking concerning media freedom has been presented by the worldwide known organization Reporters Without Borders. This year, Lithuania was assessed worse than its neighbours, Poland and Lativa.

‘We noticed the general deterioration in this field and this is related to many factors, such as the occurrence of infowars or actions taken by private media groups, acting as they were despots of information’, claims the director-general of Reporters Without Borders, Christophe Deloire. ‘Last year in the press environment was marked by severe decline of the freedom of information. Two out of three countries taken into consideration in the ranking has obtained worse results in comparison with the previous annual report’, he emphasised.

According to Reporters Without Borders, the most unsafe countries for journalists are, as follows: Eritrea (180th place), North Korea (179th place), Turkmenistan (178th place), Syria (177th place) and China (176th place). Russia was ranked 152th.

The top five of the ranking are: Finland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. Poland was ranked 18th, and Lithuania – 31th (in 2013 – 32th). In the latest ranking, Lithuania preceded Spain (33th place), United Kingdom (34th place), France (38th place), United States (49th place) and Italy (73th place), but also was overturned by Estonia (10th place) and Latvia (28th place).