The classification of Reporters Without Borders places Spain in the 32nd place This drop of three places is due to the problematic score collected in the economic indicator already the method changes among other things compared to previous years.
For this classification we included five new indicators that cause slight deviations. While in previous editions the political situation and the safety of journalists were very important, now other indicators such as legislative, economic or sociocultural were added to this analysis.
The classification reveals the information chaosthe lack of regularization and the high media polarization, which favors the appearance of fake news and propaganda. This polarization and the bad economic situation are offset by improvements in security, the social environment and the legal framework. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) points out that in Spain there are media with excessive polarization that seem to forget their informative work, is approaching more and more stubborn means.
“It is not a year in which the political context has seriously affected press freedom in Spain,” the organization comments. What Spain punishes is the economic indicator despite the fact that in general the year rallied for freedom of the press positive balancesignificantly reducing the number of aggressions and excluding records of violence at demonstrations. The gag law article criminalizing the capture of images by the press is already in the making cancellation by the Cortes after their declaration unconstitutional along with other controversial provisions of the same law, such as the so-called crimes of speech (insulting the Crown, advocating terrorism, religious sentiments, etc.).
According to the RSF, excessive concentration makes this more difficult emergence of alternative media, which has to fight against the most billed headers from subscribers, who are also affected by the economic situation. The serious difficulties of creating a medium, led by the lack of help to further promote its emergence increase the serious precariousness of working people. A situation that began to calm down in 2008 and has already done so chronic dyesanother obstacle to the development of press freedom.
refer to security Spain is ranked 35th among journalists, but still far from the highest places top rated than countries like Great Britain (49), France (85) or Germany (91). RSF justifies this security improvement with this Deactivation of the conflict in Catalonia and the lack of attacks on journalists at anti-vaccine and anti-pandemic demonstrations that have occurred in other countries.
Norway in the lead
Norway remains in first place for sixth year in a row, the first of three of the five indicators. Countries like Estonia (4) and Lithuania (9) achieve strong growth up to sneak into the top 10while the Netherlands leave this group and fall to it 28th place. Greece (108) is at the top Queue of Europe The murders of journalists in these countries are some of the reasons for their decline.
The Nordic countries remain at the top, with Norway, Denmark and Sweden continuing with a model free expression in all its glory. Instead, this year has set a new record for countries participating “very serious” situation. The most repressive for the press are China (175), Burma (176), Iran (177), Eritrea (178) and North Korea (180).