Romania and Maldive share the same position in Press Freedom Index 2010

Romania occupies the 52nd place in the Press Freedom Index 2010, sharing the same place with Maldive and being outranked by countries such as El Salvador, Burkina Faso, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Uruguay, Surinam or Ghana and Namibia.

The Index also mentiones that Romania considers now the media as a threat to national security and plans to legally censor its activities.

In this year’s index, Romania outranks countries such as Croatia, Macedonia, Bulgaria (70), Greece, R.Moldavia, Serbia, Georgia, Armenia, Montenegro and Russia.

Reporters Without Borders expressed its concern regarding the deteriorating press situation in the European Union, as 13 of the EU members are very high in the ranking and other 14 are occupying very low positions: Italy – 49, Romania – 52 and Greece and Bulgaria tie for 70th.

Compared to last year, RSF didn’t noticed any progress in a series of countries, including France and Italy.

The top 10 positions in the Index see again the Nordic countries sharing the 1st place, and here enter Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, but also Switzerland. Those six countries set an example with the way they respect journalists and news media and protect them from judicial abuse.

The countries where is not good to be a journalist are Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Mexico, according to RSF.