A new global survey on media freedoms has found Malaysia languishing close to the bottom of the barrel, placing 142nd out of 1999 countries.
US-based NGO Freedom House released the findings of its annual survey from last year, pinning Malaysia with a score of 65 on its free media index, which puts the country’s press rating squarely in “not free”. (The lower the score, the better.)
Malaysia’s performance on Freedom House’s scale puts it at 142nd place in the world, a rank it shares with notoriously press-unfriendly nations Pakistan and Turkey.
Neighbouring Indonesia fared decidedly better than we did, scoring 49 points on the free media index to land at 97th place.
Singapore, however, did a little worse than Malaysia, getting placed 148th out of 199 countries with a score of 67.
Countries surveyed were judged on their performance in accordance to 23 metrics, divided into three subcategories: economic environment, political environment, and legal environment.
Freedom House in its overview stated that 2014 was a bad year for press freedoms worldwide, with most nations getting downrated from their scores in previous years.
“The steepest declines worldwide relate to two factors: the passage and use of restrictive laws against the press — often on national security grounds — and the ability of local and foreign journalists to physically access and report freely from a given country, including protest sites and conflict areas,” the report stated, as quoted by The Malay Mail Online.
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