Iran remains one of the world’s most restrictive countries in terms of media freedom, according to the 2014 World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders. The report noted that at the end of 2013, “Iran continued to be one of the world’s biggest prisons for media personnel, with 50 journalists and netizens detained.” The Islamic Republic ranked 173rd out of 180 surveyed countries based on six general criteria including transparency, media independence and legislative framework. The index shows a worldwide decline in media freedom due to an increase in armed conflicts or “overly broad” interpretations of national security needs. Iran moved up one place from the previous year, when 179 countries were surveyed. The following is the bottom of the index and an excerpt from the report.
…
170 Cuba
171 Lao People’s Democratic Republic
172 Sudan
173 Islamic Republic of Iran
174 Vietnam
175 China
176 Somalia
177 Syrian Arab Republic
178 Turkmenistan
179 Democratic People's Republic of Korea
180 Eritrea
Iran, a major regional actor, is playing a key role in the Syrian conflict. The Iranian authorities continue to control news coverage strictly, especially when it concerns its ally, the Assad regime, the Revolutionary Guard presence in Syria and Iran’s financial aid. Any coverage of these subjects is regarded as “endangering national security.” Reporting on the nuclear issue, human rights and prisoners of conscience is also censored. At the end of 2013, Iran continued to be one of the world’s biggest prisons for media personnel, with 50 journalists and netizens detained. A few prisoners of conscience were released, but President Hassan Rouhani has not kept his campaign promises to “release all political prisoners” and bring about a change “in favour of free speech and media freedom.”
Photo credit: Kai Hendry from Singapore, Malaysia [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
