Reporters Without Borders has published its 2015 World Press Freedom Index, which measures the freedom of information and journalists in 160 countries around the world.
Finland tops the index for the fifth year running, followed by Norway and Denmark. The United States fell 16 notches to 49th for two main reasons:
- Judicial harassment of New York Times investigative reporter James Risen in connection with the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer charged under the Espionage Act with giving him classified information.
- 15 journalists were arbitrarily arrested during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against black teenager Michael Brown's fatal shooting by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
The report names describes the worst performing nations -Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eritrea - as "news and information black holes and living hells for the journalists who inhabit them."
Russia fell four places due to "a string of draconian laws, website blocking, and independent news outlets either brought under control or throttled out of existence."
Significantly, the map of press freedom looks a lot like the 2014 map of the global freedom of Internet:
