Context: India has dropped to rank 142, two points below its 2019 rank, in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index. The annual press freedom list is produced by the campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which surveys the state of the media in 180 countries and territories.
Key Points of the Report

• RSF’s latest report attributes India’s rank to the government “tightening” its grip on the media, and pressuring it to “toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line”.
• Among other issues, it has listed coordinated social media hate campaigns against journalists reporting on issues that “annoy Hindutva followers”, criminal prosecutions to gag journalists critical of authorities and police violence against journalists.
• The report also suggests that India’s rank is heavily affected by the situation in Kashmir, where it has become “virtually impossible” for journalists to do their job.
• “With no murders of journalists in India in 2019, as against six in 2018, the security situation for the country’s media might seem, on the face of it, to have improved. However, there have been constant press freedom violations,” the group said.
• Among the nations with the top ranks are Scandinavian countries Norway, Finland and Denmark, while countries like North Korea (180), Vietnam (175) and Syria (174) were some of the lowest ranked. India ranked better than its neighbours Pakistan (145) and Bangladesh (151), but worse than Sri Lanka (127) and Nepal (112).
• Pakistan dropped three places from its 2019 ranks due to the influence of the military establishment under Prime Minister Imran Khan’s rule, which the report states “cannot stand independent journalism”.
• According to the report’s barometer, in the year 2020 so far, across the world, 10 journalists have been killed, 229 imprisoned and 116 citizen journalists imprisoned while one media assistant was killed and 14 media assistants imprisoned across the world.

Impact of Coronavirus pandemic

• The coronavirus pandemic may threaten press freedom and worsen the crises that reporters around the world are facing.
• The pandemic has already redefined norms. The pandemic has allowed governments to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times.
• United States and Brazil were becoming models of hostility toward the news media.
• China, Iran and Iraq are criticised for censoring coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.

About World Press Freedom Index

• It is published annually by Reporters Without Borders since 2002, the World Press Freedom Index measures the level of media freedom in 180 countries.
• It is based on an evaluation of media freedom that measures pluralism, media independence, the quality of the legal framework and the safety of journalists.
• It also includes indicators of the level of media freedom violations in each region.
• It is compiled by means of a questionnaire in 20 languages that is completed by experts all over the world. 
• This qualitative analysis is combined with quantitative data on abuses and acts of violence against journalists during the period evaluated.