(EFE).- Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are at the bottom of the Chapultepec 2022 Index, the ranking on press freedom that was presented this Friday at the 78th General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), in Madrid, together with the Andrés Bello Catholic University of Venezuela (UCAB).
The new edition of 2022 covers the period from August 2, 2021 to August 1, 2022 and serves as an indicator of the conditions for the exercise of press freedom in America.
Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba are in positions 22, 21 and 20, respectively, and are the only ones that fall within the category of countries “without freedom of expression”.
These three countries are also the only ones with three of the four dimensions that are taken into account with the worst results: informed citizens and free to express themselves, the exercise of journalism, violence and impunity, and media control exercised by governments.
“We see new and old practices of criminalizing journalists in some countries. Some unfortunate killings even occurred in front of relatives”
“We see new and old practices of criminalizing journalists in some countries. Some unfortunate homicides occurred even in front of the relatives of these journalists, as happened in Venezuela, in addition to new hate campaigns by officials,” denounced Venezuelan León Hernández de the UCAB.
Argelia Perozo, also a professor at UCAB, pointed out that in this type of country legislation is established “that disadvantages freedom of expression, promotes censorship and even attacks the external support of independent media.”
Other countries like the United States have risen in the rankingwhich now places it in 7th place, partly due to changes in “political processes,” according to Carlos Jornet of the IAPA, and which in this case represents “one of the great problems for the United States.”
The United States at the time of Donald Trump “was lower in the ranking due to issues of stigmatization, it is still not very high and according to reports there are still many problems of attacks against journalists in the protests and many temporary detentions of journalists to collect data,” he said.
Jornet also noted that there are countries like Mexico, number 17 in the ranking, “with good data apparently in terms of government control of the media,” but it is the country “with the highest degree in the dimension of violence.”
The two highest rated countries in the ranking and that show “full freedom of expression” are Canada and Jamaica and between the first place (Canada) and the last (Nicaragua) there is a gap of 70.91 points, which reflects the “very low level” in which it is has located the Central American country.
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