Every year, on or around World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) releases its World Press Freedom Index and India does what India always does: calls the methodology opaque and moves on. The 2026 edition, released today, offers India even less to be comfortable about.

For the second year running, a territory in active, catastrophic war – where journalists are being bombed, starved, cut off from communications, and killed in the largest numbers ever recorded in any single conflict – is judged by RSF to have a marginally freer press environment than many other countries in the world. Last year, it was better than Russia. This time, it’s freer than even India.

India has slipped to the 157th rank out of 180 countries. Palestine is 156th. One spot above. Last year, India was nominally ahead when it was ranked 151 and Palestine 163. 

In fact, India had earlier improved its ranking for two consecutive years. It now ranks below not just Palestine but also Tajikistan (155), Laos (154), Pakistan (153), Bangladesh (152), and Cambodia (151). It ranks above only 23 countries, the last of which is Eritrea.

The worst index in 25 years

The 2026 RSF Index is, by RSF’s own account, the bleakest since the organisation began publishing it a quarter of a century ago. For the first time in the index’s history, more than half the world’s countries fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. In 2002, 20 percent of the global population lived in a country where press freedom was rated “good.” Today, fewer than one percent does.

Norway holds the top spot for the tenth consecutive year. Eritrea is last for the third. The United States, under Donald Trump, has dropped seven places to 64th – pushed down by what RSF describes as Trump’s systematic policy of attacking the press, the detention and deportation of journalists, and the gutting of the US Agency for Global Media, which led to the closure or downsizing of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia. 

Post-Assad Syria, after years in the bottom 10,........

© newslaundry