Page 7 - GEORptMay18

released on April 25 by Reporters Without Borders.
Warning that “hostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries” such as Turkey and Egypt, the RSF Index 2018 ranks 180 nations and hits out at the malign influence of US President Donald Trump, calling him “a media-bashing enthusiast” and noting his referencing of journalists as “enemies of the people”—a term once used by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The index also takes aim at two other populists, Czech President Milos Zeman and former Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. The former appeared at a press conference with a fake Kalashnikov inscribed with the words “for journalists”, while the latter resorted to calling journalists “dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes”. The Czech Republic is down 11 places at 34th in the latest rankings while Slovakia has fallen 10 places to 27th.
Alongside Czechia and Slovakia, fellow Visegrad Four countries, Poland and Hungary , fell four places to 58th and two places to 73rd, respectively.
Of Poland, the index report states: “Nothing seems to be able to stop Law and Justice, the national-conservative party that won the October 2015 general election, from pushing on with its plan to radically reform Poland as it sees fit, taking no account of those who think differently. Press freedom is one of its project’s main victims. The public media have been formally renamed ‘national media’ and have been transformed into government propaganda mouthpieces. Their new leaders tolerate neither opposition nor neutrality from employees and fire those who refuse to comply.”
But across the EU, B ulgaria is ranked the lowest (111th place), which also puts it below the aspiring EU members from the Western Balkans. Corruption and collusion between media, politicians, and oligarchs is widespread in Bulgaria, the report noted, singling out former intelligence chief Deylan Peevski, whose New Bulgarian Media Group controls nearly 80% of print media distribution in the country.
Turkey (downtwoplacesto157t h ),andnowknownastheworld’sbiggestjailer of journalists, comes in for huge criticism in the report, which concludes: “The witch hunt waged by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government against its media critics has come to a head since an abortive coup in July 2016. A state of emergency has allowed the authorities to eliminate dozens of media outlets with the stroke of a pen, reducing pluralism to a handful of low-circulated and targeted publications.”
Turkey’sneighbour, Iran (uponeplaceto164t h ),getslittlepraiseinitsentry, which talks of state control of news and information having “been relentless in Iran for the past 39 years”, adding: “The Islamic Revolution keeps a tight grip on most media outlets and never relents in its persecution of independent journalists, citizen-journalists, and media outlets, and uses intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials. The media that are still resisting increasingly lack the resources to report freely and independently. As a result, it is the citizen-journalists active on social networks who are now at the center of the battles for freely-reported news and information and for political change in Iran.”
Thesummaryfor Azerbaijan (downoneplaceto163r d )reads:“Notcontent
7 GEORGIA Country Report May 2018 www.intellinews.com