Washington — In its eighth annual world press freedom index, the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders warns that Europe, which largely has led the world in free press standards, has seen individual declines over the past year. Also, while the United States has increased its standing, Israel and Iran have both scored much lower marks than in 2008 because of press freedom violations, the organization says.

Reporters Without Borders (also known by the acronym RSF for its name in French) released its country press freedom rankings of 175 nations and political entities on October 20, and the organization’s secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, said he was disturbed to see European democracies such as France, Italy and Slovakia “fall steadily in rankings year after year.”

The report, which covers the period between September 1, 2008, and August 31, 2009, bases its findings on questionnaires sent to journalists and media experts around the world. The questions are designed to gather information on direct and indirect attacks on press freedom, censorship and other sources of pressure against the media in each country or governmental entity.

The 2009 report said Slovakia’s fall to 44th place was largely due to “government meddling in media activities and the adoption in 2008 of a law imposing an automatic right of response in the press.” Italy (49), as well as Bulgaria (68), fell in rank because of the impact of organized crime on the media, including the targeting of journalists. Also, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “harassment” and “increased meddling” and “a bill that would drastically curb the media’s ability to publish official phone tap transcripts” helped to explain Italy’s slide, the RSF report said.

France (43) continued to fall in the rankings “because of judicial investigations and arrests of journalists and raids on news media, and also because of meddling in the media by politicians, including President Nicolas Sarkozy,” according to the report.

Secretary-General Julliard said: “Europe should be setting an example as regards civil liberties. How can you condemn human rights violations abroad if you do not behave irreproachably at home?”

The report said younger democracies such as Mali (31), South Africa (33) and Ghana (27) in Africa, as well as Uruguay (29) and Trinidad and Tobago (28) in the Western Hemisphere, have been making improvements in press freedom and moving past some of the European countries.

However, RSF’s index shows that the first 13 spots are still held by other European countries, with Denmark, Finland and Ireland considered the top three places where journalists can freely do their jobs.

U.S. ADVANCES; ISRAEL AND IRAN DECLINE

The United States advanced 16 places from number 36 to number 20, and the report cited reforms under President Obama. “The judicial authorities are no longer jailing journalists and violating civil liberties in the name of national security as they were in the Bush era. So the U.S. is back in the press freedom top 20,” the RSF report said. But at the same time, the report said that despite some improvement, “the attitude of the United States towards the media in Iraq and Afghanistan is worrying,” citing the U.S. military’s arrest of several journalists during the past year and the continued incarceration of photojournalist Ibrahim Jassam in Iraq.

Israel fell sharply to number 93, below some others in the Middle East region such as Kuwait (60), Lebanon (61) and the United Arab Emirates (86). RSF said Israel’s January military offensive in Gaza had a negative effect on the media, with three journalists killed and 20 injured while covering the conflict.

In addition, “Israel has begun to use the same methods internally as it does outside its own territory. Reporters Without Borders registered five arrests of journalists, some of them completely illegal, and three cases of imprisonment. The military censorship applied to all the media is also posing a threat to journalists,” the report said.

But Iran, which has consistently ranked at the lower end of the spectrum, fell to 172, and RSF cited the crisis stemming from the disputed June 13 presidential elections as having “fostered regime paranoia about journalists and bloggers.”

RSF said the state of press freedom in Iran is now only better than in Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, “where the media are so suppressed they are nonexistent.”

The past year of press freedom in Iran has been characterized by “automatic prior censorship, state surveillance of journalists, mistreatment, journalists forced to flee the country, illegal arrests and imprisonment,” the RSF report said.

FREE PRESS IS ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The United States has “a strong commitment to media freedom worldwide,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a May 1 statement marking World Press Freedom Day.

In today’s world, the free flow of information and ideas offers “a powerful force for progress,” Clinton said.

“Independent print, broadcast and online media outlets are more than sources of news and opinion. They also expose abuses of power, fight corruption, challenge assumptions, and provide constructive outlets for new ideas and dissent,” Clinton said.

The secretary said that press freedom is an essential component of democracy and economic development, and wherever it is jeopardized, “all other human rights are also under threat.”

More information on the Press Freedom Index 2009 is available on the Reporters Without Borders Web site.