Global Press Freedom Declines As Nigeria Ranks ‘Partly Free’

Washington D.C

Global press freedom has declined in 2014 to its lowest levels across the world while Nigeria was identified as “partly free” for the media.

This was disclosed in the Freedom of the Press 2015 report released in Washington D.C, U.S. on Wednesday by Freedom House, a U.S. based non governmental organisation that conducts research and advocacy on levels of press freedom around the world.

Presenting the annual report, Jennifer Dunham, Project Manager, Freedom House and co-author of the report said, “conditions for the media deteriorated sharply in 2014, as journalists around the world faced mounting restrictions on the free flow of news and information-including grave threats to their own lives.”

The report added that, “in a time of seemingly unlimited access to information and new methods of content delivery, more and more areas of the world are becoming virtually inaccessible to journalists.”

Freedom of Press 2015, which is the latest edition of an annual report published by Freedom House since 1980, found that global press freedom declined in 2014 to its lowest point in more than 10 years.

“The rate of decline also accelerated drastically, with the global average score suffering its largest one-year drop in a decade.

“The share of the world’s population that enjoys a free press stood at 14 percent, meaning only one in seven people live in countries where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures,” the report said.

The report also showed that while there were positive developments in some countries within the period under review, the dominant global trend was negative.

Nigeria, for instance, was said to have been partly free in the Freedom of the Press 2015 report while the country experienced a decline in civil liberties in the Freedom of World report 2015 also released by the Freedom House on Wednesday in Washington.