{"id":537941,"date":"2026-04-30T09:23:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T06:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=537941"},"modified":"2026-04-30T11:56:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:56:00","slug":"belarus-rises-one-place-in-reporters-without-borders-press-freedom-index","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/belarus-rises-one-place-in-reporters-without-borders-press-freedom-index","title":{"rendered":"Belarus Rises One Place in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Reporters Without Borders has published its annual World <a href=\"https:\/\/rsf.org\/en\/2026-rsf-index-press-freedom-25-year-low?data_type=general&amp;year=2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Press Freedom Index<\/a>. Belarus has moved up from 166th to 165th place. Last year, it also rose by one position.<\/p>\n<p>The country\u2019s score in the new ranking improved from 25.73 to 27.72 points.<\/p>\n<p>According to Reporters Without Borders, 19 journalists and two media workers are currently imprisoned in Belarus.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, between 500 and 600 journalists have been forced into exile, while most of those who remain work underground. They are targeted by police, arrested, searched, sometimes beaten and subjected to ill-treatment in prison&#8221;<\/em>, the Belarus profile in the report states.<\/p>\n<p>The report also notes a continuing deterioration in press freedom worldwide. For the first time in the 25-year history of the index, more than half of the countries surveyed fall into the \u201cdifficult\u201d or \u201cvery serious\u201d categories.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Of the five indicators used to assess press freedom worldwide, which define the economic, legal, political and social environment for journalism, the legal indicator showed the sharpest decline this year&#8221;<\/em>, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>Norway tops this year\u2019s ranking, followed by the Netherlands and Estonia. Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Portugal also feature in the top ten.<\/p>\n<p>The United States dropped seven places to 64th out of 180 countries.<\/p>\n<p>Russia ranks 172nd (down one place from 2025), Lithuania 15th (down one), Latvia 17th (down two), Poland 27th (up four), and Ukraine 55th (up seven).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Interactive or visual content\" src=\"https:\/\/flo.uri.sh\/visualisation\/28552533\/embed#?secret=K9cfHiZrg1\" data-secret=\"K9cfHiZrg1\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" height=\"575\" width=\"500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reporters Without Borders has published its annual World Press Freedom Index. Belarus has moved up from 166th to 165th place. Last year, it also rose by one position. The country\u2019s score in the new ranking improved from 25.73 to 27.72 points. According to Reporters Without Borders, 19 journalists and two media workers are currently imprisoned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":537940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/69f3192404080.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Belarus Rises One Place in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143127,143090],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-society","category-politics"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}