Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released its tenth annual Press Freedom Index.

“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings,” a statement accompanying the report said. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements.”

The index, released on Wednesday, is a report published annually by the NGO. This year, it assigned a rating to 179 countries using 44 different questions designed to gauge the state of press freedom in those nations, a second RSF release said.

“It asks questions about every kind of violation directly affecting journalists and netizens (including murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment),” the release states.

Along with government abuses, the study considers the actions of military, criminal, and private interest groups.

According to the release, the questionnaire was distributed to 18 different freedom of expression organizations across five continents and 150 RSF correspondents. The pool of sources questioned for the study was further widened with journalists, human rights activists, and jurists.

The study is regarded favorably by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), an advocate organization for press freedom.

“In these cases, when there’s no hard science, it’s sometimes more about the message we send out,” said Annie Game, executive director of CJFE, "it's important to spread the message about press freedom."

View the complete report.

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U.S President Barack Obama. COURTESY of Wikimedia Commons.

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