Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international non-profit and non-governmental organization focused on safeguarding the right to freedom of information, ranked Taiwan 27th in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index report released on Friday.
The index says Taiwan is a liberal democracy and the 21st largest economy in the world, with the principle of media freedom generally respected, though reporters still face a "polarized media environment dominated by sensational content and the pursuit of profits.” The RSF also cited a 2022 Reuters Institute survey showing that Taiwanese people have one of the lowest levels of trust in the media among democratic countries, ranking it last in the Asia-Pacific region with a trust score of only 28 percent due to the media’s vulnerability to China's disinformation.
Hong Kong is ranked 135th with China 172nd among 180 countries and regions. China has the largest known number of imprisoned journalists in the world at 119, including 10 Hong Kong journalists. Norway has ranked first for the eighth consecutive year, while Afghanistan, Syria, and Eritrea are at the bottom of the index. The United States ranked 55th in this year's report, down 10 places from the previous year.
The RSF concluded that press freedom around the world is threatened by the political authorities that are supposed to be its guarantors. Among the five indicators that determine the ranking, the political indicator has experienced the largest decline, with a global average dip of 7.6 percentage points.
