SA is 43rd in World Press Freedom Index

However, no African country is listed among the top 20 and the continent will continue to live up to its ‘dark reputation', as Eritrea is ranked 169th – the last place in the index measuring the levels of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world.

“There is nothing surprising about this,” the Paris-based media watchdog said on its website. “Even if we are not aware of all press freedom violations in North Korea and Turkmenistan, which are second and third from last, Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom.

“The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticise the regime are thrown in prison. We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate,” RSF lamented.

Tight times for SA media

Here at home it has been a stressful year for SA independent media, with the government and its allies firing salvo after salvo at editors and journalists for ‘going too far' and becoming ‘law unto themselves', prompting fears that the country's hard-fought press freedom was on the verge of collapsing.

The top three African countries in this press freedom index are Mauritius (25th), Namibia (26th) and Ghana (29th).

Apart from Eritrea, a further nine countries are among the last 30 at the bottom of the index: Sudan (140th), Tunisia (145th), Egypt (146th), Rwanda (147th), Zimbabwe (149th), Ethiopia (150th), Equatorial Guinea (153rd), Libya (155th) and Somalia (159th) – reinforcing the notion that Africa's press freedom remains nothing but an empty dream.

Target: bloggers and online media

Furthermore, RSF said that several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.

“We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media,” the organisation said.

The following is the list of index's top 10 countries: 1. Iceland, 2. Norway, 3. Estonia, 4. Slovakia, 5. Belgium, 6. Finland, 7. Sweden, 8. Denmark, 9. Ireland, 10. Portugal.

Founded in 1985, RSF (Reporters without Borders) fights for press freedom on a daily basis, and gives financial aid each year to 100 or so journalists or media outlets in difficulty (to pay for lawyers, medical care and equipment, as well to the families of imprisoned families).