FEB 10 Press freedom helps to fortify democracy and good governance in a country. How do you measure press freedom? What indicators do you use? Discussions on measuring press freedom will come up on National Press Day on Feb. 9, observed in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, better known by its French initials RSF, and Freedom House in Washington, are two organizations that publish annual worldwide press freedom indexes.

For its World Press Freedom Index, RSF prepares a lengthy questionnaire. It lists 74 questions and additional sub-questions in six core criteria: pluralism, media independence, environment and self censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and infrastructure. Journalists, researchers, human rights activists and 150 RSF correspondents worldwide answer the questionnaire.

Sample questions are: do privately owned print and TV networks exist? Are there any kinds of limits from owners or governments? The index also attempts to show restrictions on the free flow of information on the Internet.

RSF uses a logarithmic formula applying a weighting system to give a country score. The score ranges from 0 100 with 0 the best possible score on the state of press freedom and 100 the worst.

Outside the questionnaire, RSF staff also assess the level of violence against journalists. The violence score with a given weight of 20 percent is factored into the score of six criteria for the final score. The outcome is a ranking of 179 countries.

Meanwhile, Freedom House does not use a globally distributed questionnaire as its main tool. It uses input from its own travel, professional contacts and the findings of human rights and press freedom organisations.

To assess press freedom levels in a given country, Freedom House uses 23 methodology questions and 109 indicators in three categories: the legal environment, the political environment and the economic environment.

Specimen questions are: Is there implicit impunity for those who commit crimes against journalists? Is there government control of state-run media outlets? For each methodology question, the lower number of points, the freer the situation.

A score of 0 to 30 places the country in the free press group, 31 to 60 in the partly free press group and 61 to 100 in the not free press group.

Excerpt from:

Getting the measure of press freedom — Warief Djajanto Basorie