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2014 sees ‘dramatic drop’ in media freedom level

Media freedom suffered a “drastic decline” worldwide last year, watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said yesterday.

Group head Christophe Deloire said: “There has been an overall deterioration linked to very different factors, with information wars on the one hand and action by non-state groups acting like news despots on the other.”

The RSF 2015 World Press Freedom Index stated that there had been an 8 per cent increase in violations of freedom of information in 180 countries in 2014 compared with 2013.

Parties in conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine were waging “a fearsome information war” in which media personnel were killed, captured or pressed to relay propaganda, it claimed.

The watchdog said that the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Boko Haram in northern Nigeria and Cameroon, and criminal organisations in Italy and Latin America all used “fear and reprisals to silence journalists … who dare to investigate.”

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