The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries released by Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières in French), a Paris-based organization that defends and promotes freedom of information and freedom of the press, based upon the organization’s assessment of press freedom records of the countries in the previous year. It measures the degree of freedom enjoyed by the journalists, news organizations and cybercitizens in each country, and the efforts they make in respect of that freedom. The report is based on a questionnaire and certain observations carried out by Reporters Without Borders correspondents in the competing countries. The smaller the score, the greater the freedom of the press.
According to the 2016 report, the highest ranking countries in press freedom are Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and New Zealand. The countries in the bottom five are China, Syria, Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea. The global scores of Finland and Eritrea, the highest and the lowest scorers, are 8.59 and 83.92 respectively. India ranks 133 on the list with a global score of 43.17.
