Georgia Holds the 118th Place in the World Media Independence Index

Georgia Holds the 118th Place in the World Media Independence Index

Georgia holds 118th place in the world media independence index complied by international nongovernmental organization Freedom House, which conducted a survey of world media and issued the results in its book titled: “Freedom of the Press 2006: A Global Survey of Media Independence”. According to the survey, Georgian media is “partly free”.

During the study the researchers used various criteria: the legislation existing in each country (how available it is to publish a new newspaper or launch a TV station, how the courts deal with the lawsuits against media organizations and journalists), political factors (control of media by the state, existence of censorship etc.), financial standing of media (for example the level of corruption among the journalists, dependence of media outlets on the state or political parties).

According to the survey, 73 countries out of 194 have free media, 54 countries have partly free media and 67 countries have no free media. Only 17% of the planet’s population lives in the countries with absolutely free media. 45% of the planet’s population lives in countries with partly free media and 43% of world’s population lives in countries that have no free media.

The top ten of countries with free media include Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and New Zealand. USA together with Germany and Estonia hold the 17th place, Lithuania and Canada share 26th place and Latvia holds 31st place. Ukraine holds the 113th place, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan the 137th place, Moldova holds 141st place, Russia got 158th place and Azerbaijan the 161st place.

Turkmenistan, Burma, Cuba, Libya and North Korea hold the last few places in this rating.

media.ge