World Press Freedom Index 2022

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Performance of India

• India has fallen eight places from 150th in the 2022 among the 180 countries.
• India’s position has been consistently falling in the index since 2016 when it was ranked 133.
• The reasons behind fall in ranking is the increased “violence against journalists” and a “politically partisan media”.

Reasons behind the Fall in Ranking of India

• Pressure from Government
• Faults in Policy Framework
• India is World’s Most Dangerous Countries for Mediapersons
• On Kashmir Issue

Scoring Criteria:

• The Index’s rankings are based on a score ranging from 0 to 100 that is assigned to each country or territory, with 100 being the best possible score (the highest possible level of press freedom) and 0 the worst.

Evaluation Criteria:

Each country or territory’s score is evaluated using five contextual indicators : 

• Political Context 
• Legal Framework, 
• Economic Context, 
• Sociocultural Context 
• Safety.

Ranking of Countries:

Top and Worst Performers:

• Norway (1st) Denmark (2nd), Sweden (3rd) Estonia (4th) and Finland (5th) grabbed the top positions.
• North Korea remained at the bottom of the list of the 180 countries.
• Russia was placed at 155th position.

India’s Neighbours:

• Nepal has climbed up by 30 points in the global ranking at 76th position.
• The index placed Pakistan at 157th position, Sri Lanka 146th, Bangladesh 162nd and Myanmar at 176th position.
• China was ranked at 175th position.

Government Response

• Indian government does not agree with the conclusions drawn by the organisation for various reasons, including “very low sample size, little or no weightage to fundamentals of democracy, adoption of a methodology which is questionable and non-transparent”.
• Government is committed to ensure the right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined under Article 19 of the Constitution.
• The Press Council of India (PCI) has been set up under the Press Council Act, 1978 mainly to preserve the freedom of the press and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies in the country PCI looks into the complaints filed ‘by the Press’ regarding curtailment of press freedom.