Baltics rise in World Press Freedom Index

All three Baltic countries have risen on the latest World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, despite what the organisation described as a year of "decline on all fronts" for media freedom in Europe and the wider world.

Estonia remains the highest-placed of the three Baltic countries (tenth in the world), and has moved up one place since last year. Latvia saw a big rise, climbing nine positions to 28th in the index, while Lithuania moved up one place and is ranked 31st out of the 180 countries covered. Despite increasing its rank, Estonia's overall score for press freedom fell slightly, while Latvia and Lithuania's both increased. 

Media freedom suffered a "drastic decline" worldwide last year in part because of extremist groups such as Islamic State and Boko Haram, the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (also known as Reporters Sans Frontieres or RSF) said in its annual evaluation released on Thursday.

Finland was assessed as the country with the highest level of media freedom for the fifth consecutive year, although its overall score decreased. The other countries in the top five were also all in northern Europe: Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. The country with the lowest level of media freedom is Eritrea, followed by North Korea and Turkmenistan. Some neighbours of the Baltics also received low scores: Belarus was placed 157th out of 180, while the Russian Federation was 152nd overall. 

"There has been an overall deterioration linked to very different factors, with information wars, and action by non-state groups acting like news despots," the head of the Paris-based group, Christophe Deloire, told AFP.

The RSF 2015 World Press Freedom Index stated that there were 3,719 violations of freedom of information in 180 countries in 2014 - eight percent more than a year earlier.