Missing is "Brutal, and getting worse," Symm. Putin seems to be tightening his grip on Russia.
The nature of major changes over the past five years is also striking. Since 2010, the most significant score improvements have occurred in countries where the media environment had been among the worst in the world. Tunisia, with a gain of 37 points, not only registered the biggest improvement over this period, but was also the only country with large gains that maintained a positive trajectory in 2014. While Myanmar and Libya have each earned net improvements of 21 points, both suffered score declines in the past year and remain in the Not Free category. In a disturbing trend, several countries with histories of more democratic practices have experienced serious deterioration. Greece has fallen by 21 points since 2010, as existing structural problems were exacerbated by the economic crisis and related political pressures. Large five-year drops were also recorded in Thailand (13 points), Ecuador (12), Turkey (11), Hong Kong (9), Honduras (7), Hungary (7), and Serbia (7).
In 2014, influential authoritarian powers such as China and Russia maintained a tight grip on locally based print and broadcast media, while also seeking to control the more independent views provided either online or by foreign news sources. Beijing and Moscow in particular were more overt in their efforts to manipulate the information environment in regions that they considered to be within their sphere of influence: Hong Kong and Taiwan for the former, and Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Baltics for the latter.
It's not in the bottom 10, though:
The world’s 10 worst-rated countries and territories, with scores of between 90 and 100 points, were Belarus, Crimea, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Crimea—analyzed separately for the first time in the current edition—and Syria joined the bottom-ranked cohort in 2014. In these settings, independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime, citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited, and dissent is crushed through imprisonment, torture, and other forms of repression. Crimea became subject to Russian press laws after its occupation and annexation in early 2014, and its media faced restrictive regulations and widespread violence. Iran continues to earn its place among the Worst of the Worst as one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists, including Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who has been detained without charge since July 2014.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom ... al-declineRussia has a current score of 83 out of 100 (with 100 being the worst score possible).
Foreign journalists faced difficulties while working in Russia during the year. In July, Yevgeniy Agarkov, a reporter with the Ukrainian television station 1+1, was arrested in the city of Voronezh, where he had gone to cover the trial of a Ukrainian military pilot who had been captured in Ukraine and accused in the killing of two journalists with the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK). Russian immigration officials charged Agarkov for not having proper accreditation to work as a journalist in the country. He was convicted, deported, and banned from returning to Russia for five years. In September, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news team was attacked in the southern city of Astrakhan, where they had gone to investigate the deaths of Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine—an especially sensitive subject given the Kremlin’s denials that it had deployed troops across the border. The BBC crew’s camera was smashed and their recordings were deleted.
At least two journalists died in Russia under unclear circumstances during the year. Timur Kuashev, a correspondent for the independent magazine Dosh, was found dead on August 1 after disappearing the previous day in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, part of the restive North Caucasus area. He had also blogged and contributed to news websites covering the region, and received numerous threats in response to his critical reporting on law enforcement and local officials. In October, freelance journalist Valeriy Donskoy died of pneumonia in Moscow after being held in harsh conditions near the Russian-Ukrainian border, though the details of his detention and the identity of his captors were not reported. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented 56 work-related murders of journalists in Russia since 1992, finding that the perpetrators nearly always enjoyed impunity. In May 2014, after numerous delays, five suspects were convicted for the October 2006 murder of prominent investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya. They received sentences ranging from 12 years to life in prison in June. Press freedom advocates noted that those who ordered the defendants to carry out the contract-style killing remained unidentified and at large.
Physical assaults on journalists were reported in a range of Russian regions in 2014. Several reporters investigating the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine were threatened and attacked. In August, Lev Shlosberg, a Pskov-based newspaper publisher and member of the opposition Yabloko party, suffered a serious assault that left him unconscious. Shlosberg said the attack was related to his paper’s investigation into the secret deployment of Russian troops from the Pskov region to eastern Ukraine. Also in August, investigative reporter Aleksandr Krutov was beaten by unknown assailants in the city of Saratov. It was the fourth attack suffered by Krutov, who covers crime for a local publication, in his 20-year career. In September, a television crew in Novosibirsk was attacked by a group of men who smashed the videographer’s camera and struck him in the face. The team had been reporting on an employment company suspected of fraud for the Precedent television show. In a separate attack in Novosibirsk in December, two men disguised as couriers entered the offices of the Taiga.info news website, searched for editor in chief Yevgeniy Mezdrikov, and began beating him before being chased off by employees.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom ... 015/russiaIt's still better than China, though, who has an 86 out of 100 for press freedom. Yikes!
In addition to censorship, the authorities have taken steps to actively guide user discussion online. Since 2004, CCP and government officials at all levels have recruited and trained an army of paid web commentators. Their tasks include posting progovernment remarks, tracking public opinion, disrupting or diverting criticism, and participating in public online chats with officials to provide the appearance of state-citizen interaction.
Conditions for foreign media in the country remain highly restrictive. Harassment of foreign reporters, including occasional physical attacks, and intimidation of their Chinese sources and staff continued during 2014. The authorities used website blocking and the threat of visa denials to retaliate against foreign journalists and news organizations that they deemed objectionable. One New York Times correspondent, veteran journalist Austin Ramzy, was forced to leave the country in January and report from Taiwan after the government refused to issue him a visa. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported in November that he too was being denied a visa. However, in a departure from the previous year, the authorities by late 2014 had issued hundreds of annual visa renewals to resident journalists from most outlets, including the New York Times. The websites of Bloomberg News and the New York Times have been blocked since 2012, when they reported on the wealth of top leaders’ families, and other foreign news outlets experienced temporary blocking during 2014.
Since 2007, foreign journalists have been free of internal travel restrictions in most areas and allowed to conduct interviews with private individuals without prior government consent, but the looser rules do not apply to correspondents from Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan. In addition, travel to Tibet and other politically sensitive regions still requires prior approval and close supervision by authorities. In 2014, access for foreign journalists to Xinjiang and Tibetan areas was especially restricted, making it very difficult to report independently on violent clashes between Uighurs and security forces in Xinjiang and ongoing self-immolation protests in Tibet.
Violence against journalists and online whistle-blowers remained a concern during 2014, as did arbitrary detention and abuse in custody. In May, two detained journalists—Gao Yu and Xiang Nanfu—appeared in televised “confessions” that were apparently given under duress and without due process. The tactic had been revived in 2013, drawing comparisons to the Mao Zedong era.
Harassment of ordinary citizens by security forces sometimes touches on freedom of expression issues. In January 2014, a Tibetan worker was reportedly detained and abused in custody after police found photos and audio recordings of the Dalai Lama on his mobile phone during a random check of personal devices; such checks have become an increasingly common occurrence in Lhasa.
Russia's more strong-armed than China. In China, the government mostly works by arrests and censorship. In Russia, journalists face the threat of death.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom ... 2015/china
