Reporters Without Borders studies how COVID-19 threatens the right to free, independent, diverse and reliable information.

This 2020 edition of the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which evaluates the situation for journalists each year in 180 countries and territories, sees the next ten years paint to be pivotal for press freedom. Why? Because of converging crises affecting the future of journalism.

During a pandemic like the one occurring across the globe, the work of reporters around the world is more important than ever to ensure transparency about the scope of outbreaks and the measures that governments are taking to contain them, but as press freedom has been declining in recent years, the ability of media to report freely and independently has been crippled across the whole planet.

The 2020 World Press Freedom Index shows that the coming decade will be decisive for the future of journalism, mainly because of a series of crisis that haunt the will to report freely. These, according to the #RSFindex2020 can be:

• A geopolitical crisis (due to the aggressiveness of authoritarian regimes).
• A technological crisis (due to a lack of democratic guarantees).
• A democratic crisis (due to polarisation and repressive policies).
• A crisis of trust (due to suspicion and even hatred of the media).
• An economic crisis (impoverishing quality journalism).

The economic crisis that follows the COVID outbreak has also accentuated the phenomena of ownership concentration and, even more, conflicts of interest, which threaten journalistic pluralism and independence. The 2020 edition of the RSF index sees there is a clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking.

“We are entering a decisive decade for journalism linked to crises that affect its future,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire. “The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the negative factors threatening the right to reliable information, and is itself an exacerbating factor. What will freedom of information, pluralism and reliability look like in 2030? The answer to that question is being determined today.”

Key findings from the Index

1. Norway tops the Index for the fourth year in a row in 2020. Finland is again the runner-up.
2. North Korea has taken the last position from Turkmenistan, while Eritrea (178th) continues to be Africa’s worst-ranked country.
3. Authoritarian regimes have kept their poor rankings.
4. Europe continues to be the most favourable continent for media freedom, despite oppressive policies in certain European Union and Balkan countries. It is followed by the Americas.
5. The United States and Brazil are becoming models of hostility towards the media.
6.  In the United States, half of the media jobs have been lost over the past ten years.
7. China, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are the world’s biggest jailers of journalists.