The Press Freedom Index is Prepared With Bias and a Flawed Methodology

Last week, news came into the limelight that press freedom in India has decreased dramatically as India slid in the index of press freedom. This report was released by an organisation called Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit and non-governmental organisation without any accountability, with the World Press Freedom Index. Although it would not be unfair to assume that the sample size would be tiny, typically consisting of an elite class of journalists, activists, and social scientists to decide how much freedom people enjoy. Also, there are questions like, “Are journalists frequently convicted because of their work, whether for press offenses or for common law crimes?”, “Are laws against terrorism, separatism and/or extremism used against journalists?” and so on. A few years back, Thomson Reuters Foundation released a ranking of countries based on women’s safety in which India was declared as the most dangerous country for women.