Malta 14th in EU for press freedom

Malta has been placed in 14th position among EU member states for the freedom of its press, the same ranking as last year.

The island ranked in the same position as Cyprus, Lithuania and Slovakia, according to a report issued yesterday by Freedom House, an international independent watchdog supporting freedom in the world. Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day.

The report comes as the Institute of Maltese Journalists yesterday repeated its call to the government to implement the Freedom of Information Act as “soon as possible”.

Malta’s “freedom of the press” ranking surpassed more developed EU member states, such as France and Spain.

Italy, Bulgaria and Romania obtained the lowest ranking in the EU and were placed among those countries described as having only a “partly free” press.

The Freedom House survey, which has been published annually for the last 30 years, ranks the press freedom of countries and territories worldwide on a number of criteria, primarily legal, political and economic. Each country’s ranking is established on a set of indicators, numbering 109 in 2011, and evaluated by regional experts and scholars in the field.

Finland was again ranked as having the freest press in the world, followed by Norway. At the other end of the league table, the worst of the worst are Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Of the 196 countries and territories assessed during 2010, just over a third were rated “free” (Malta among them), another third “partly free” and the last third “not free”.

The report found that a number of key countries − including Egypt, Honduras, Hungary, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine − experienced significant declines, producing a global landscape in which only one in six people live in countries with a press that is designated “free”.

With regard to Western Europe, the report notes a change from recent years, where the average score showed the second-largest decline of any region, led by negative developments in Denmark, Iceland and Turkey.

“The UK remains a concern due to its expansive libel laws, while heavy media concentration and official interference in state-owned outlets continues to hold Italy at partly free,” the report states.