According to the 2010 world press freedom index from Reporters Without Borders (or Reporters Sans Frontières, RSF), France and Italy trail the rest of Western Europe, ranked 44th and 49th respectively out of the 178 countries rated.

"It is disturbing to see several European Union member countries continuing to fall in the index," said RSF secretary-general Jean-François Julliard. "There is an urgent need for the European countries to recover their exemplary status."

Other EU members that came in low include Romania at 52nd and Greece and Bulgaria which tied at 70th. Spain was 39th.

RSF highlighted France and Italy as examples of countries in which the organisation has pointed out problems before but have seen no improvement. "Events of the past year - violation of the protection of journalists' sources, the continuing concentration of media ownership, displays of contempt and impatience on the part of government officials towards journalists and their work, and judicial summonses - have confirmed their inability to reverse this trend," the organisation's website said.

Northern Europe leads the table, with Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland sharing joint first place. "These six countries set an example in the way they respect journalists and news media and protect them from judicial abuse," and RSF emphasised their continual progress, praising in particular the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and Sweden's Press Freedom Act.

The US came in at 20, the same position as last year and just behind the UK at 19.

Lebanon was the highest ranked country in the Arab world, at 78th place, though as Lebanese English-language daily The Daily Star noted, the country's position at top of the region is not a cause for celebration as it owed largely to the poor performances of neighbouring states. Lebanon's ranking has in fact dropped 17 places since last year due to a number of incidents, including the death of one journalist and the detention of another.

Ranked worst for press freedom are Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan, which have dominated the bottom of the table in recent years. Their situations continue to deteriorate and they have been joined in the last ten by Iran, Burma, Syria, Sudan, China, Rwanda and Laos. Rwanda has dismissed the index as "totally unfounded and misleading," according to Reuters, who spoke to a Rwandan minister.

Clearly, scoring and ranking press freedom in countries worldwide is an inevitably unscientific endeavour and the ratings cannot be taken as definitive; however, such indexes are useful in raising awareness of violations.

RSF's index is based on a 43-criteria questionnaire that seeks to identify violations that have occurred directly affecting journalists and the news media and the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these violations, to establish the level of self-censorship in each country and the level of financial pressure they operate under, and takes into account the legal framework for the media, any state monopolies and the level of independence of the public media. The actual questionnaire and scoring methods are available here and here.

Source: RSF