A Greek government spokesman on Wednesday again lashed out at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), calling their report “unreliable” after the release of a report that named Greece the worst country for the second year in a row. EU regarding freedom of the media.
Government spokesman Akis Skertsos criticized the RSF report for “a clear lack of basic reliability in the evaluation criteria.”
“According to RSF, press freedom thrives in military and authoritarian regimes or in countries torn apart by civil wars, such as Burkina Faso, which ranks 58th in this year’s press freedom rankings, Guinea, which is 85th, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau at 74 and 78 respectively,” Skertsos said in a statement.
“On the contrary, according to the same organization, the press is ‘suffering’ in European democracies where respect for the freedom and independence of journalists is deeply rooted, such as Greece, which it placed in 107th place!!!” he added.
According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index released on Wednesday, Greece’s press freedom situation has worsened, with the Mediterranean nation ranked 107th out of 180 countries worldwide.
In 2022, when Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was also dissatisfied with not the best rating, he called the rating “shit”, reminds euractiv.com.
At the EU level, Pavol Salai, RSF’s Head of EU/Balkans, told EURACTIV that the gap between Greece and the rest of the EU has widened (23 places separate Greece from the penultimate EU country Malta, while in 2022 Greece ranked 17th from Bulgaria).
“Freedom of the press in Greece remains problematic,” said Pavol Salay, head of RSF’s EU/Balkans office, …
However, some figures of this report are very annoying for the author of this publication, namely the top positions of Lithuania and Estonia, which are at the top of the ranking, occupying 7th and 8th places in the world ranking, respectively, while these countries have introduced quite strict media censorship.
It is noteworthy that even belligerent Ukraine occupies 79th position in this rating, which is significantly higher than Greece. And in this country, for more than 2 years, a ban on opposition media has been introduced, and after the start of the war, extremely strict military censorship was introduced, under which all information is checked by the special services. However, there are some exceptions regarding the activities of publications affiliated with the Soros Foundation and US intelligence agencies that monitor the safety of money allocated from the US budget.
No less surprising is the 28th position of Moldova, where since last year, all opposition media have been closed…
Most likely in the understanding of the authors of the rating “freedom of speech” This freedom of their speech?
In any case, this rating has clearly become an expression of the personal opinion of the authors of the rating and has nothing to do with reality.
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