Ranking of press freedom from »Reporters Without Borders«: situation in Germany only »satisfactory«

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Equipment of a camera team after the May 1st demonstration in Berlin

Photo: Christoph Soeder / picture alliance / dpa

In the worldwide »ranking of press freedom« by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Germany was out of the top group for the first time.

"Due to the many attacks on corona demonstrations, we had to downgrade the freedom of the press in Germany from" good "to only" satisfactory ": a clear alarm signal," said RSF board spokesman Michael Rediske in the balance sheet published in Berlin on Tuesday.

Germany ranks 13th in a comparison of 180 countries.

In the previous year, the Federal Republic was two places higher.

According to a comparable method, the list has existed since 2013.

Attacks especially during demonstrations

"The main reason for this assessment is that violence against media workers in Germany has reached an unprecedented level in 2020," the organization justified its downgrading. In the 2020 calendar year, RSF (the abbreviation comes from the French name »Reporters sans frontières«, by which the organization is internationally known) counted at least 65 violent attacks against journalists in the country. "This means that the number has quintupled compared to 2019 (at least 13 attacks)." The organization also assumes that the number of unreported cases in 2020 was higher than before.

According to the reporter organization, the majority of the physical and verbal attacks occurred on or on the sidelines of demonstrations against corona measures.

»Journalists were beaten, kicked and pushed to the ground, they were spat at and harassed, insulted, threatened and prevented from working.

More than three quarters of all physical attacks occurred on or on the fringes of demonstrations, including in addition to the corona protests, for example, at demos against the ban on the left-wing internet platform linksunten.indymedia.org and at demos on May 1st, "says RSF.

Never before have so few countries been rated “good”

Never since the beginning of the continuous statistics have there been so few countries in which RSF has rated the freedom of the press as "good". Their number fell from 13 to 12; China, the ex-Soviet republic of Turkmenistan in Central Asia, North Korea and the African Eritrea remain at the bottom with minor shifts.

RSF denounced that numerous governments as well as heads of state and government had spread disinformation on the subject of corona. The then President of the USA, Donald Trump, propagated just as ineffective or even dangerous means against Covid-19 as his counterparts Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The USA is in 45th place in the statistics (previous year: 46), Austria in 17th (18) and Switzerland in 10th (8th). According to statistics, Norway, Finland and Sweden do best.

According to the RSF, the pandemic intensified and consolidated repressive tendencies worldwide: "In countries as different as China, Venezuela, Serbia and Kosovo, media workers were arrested for their corona reporting," the global survey concluded.

More than 100 media workers are in prison in China, more than in any other country in the world.

"If the world hopefully soon returns to normalcy, respect for the indispensable role of journalism for a functioning society must return," demanded Rediske.

feb / dpa