China Has 'Highly Repressive' Press: Poll

Freedom House map of media freedom in 2011.

2011-05-02
Radio Free Asia

Cambodia’s score also deteriorated due to an "aggressive use of disinformation and defamation legislation against journalists, as well as a reduction in media diversity following the closure of an opposition newspaper," Freedom House said.

Asia suffers a modest decline in an annual media freedom survey.

The level of press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region has fallen, with conditions in China "highly repressive" and with extensive state and Communist party controls also evident in Laos and Vietnam, U.S. human rights group Freedom House said in an annual survey Monday.

The region is also home to two of the survey’s poorest performers, Burma and North Korea, it said, citing a modest decline in the average score for the Asia-Pacific in the group's latest annual media freedom index assessing the degree of print, broadcast, and Internet freedom.

Only five percent of the region’s population had access to free media, while 46 percent live in "partly free" and 49 percent in "not free" media environments.