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Global press freedom slips to decade low Reports watchdog; Bangladesh drops 3 places in ranking

AGENCIES, Washington
World press freedom has hit its lowest level in a decade after a regression in Egypt, Turkey and Ukraine, and HS efforts to curb national security reporting, a watchdog said Thursday.
A report by Freedom House, which has been conducting annual surveys since 1980, found that the share of the world's population with media rated "free" was 14 percent in 2013, or only one in seven people.
Of the world population, 44 percent lived in areas where the media was "not free" and 42 percent in places where press was "partly free," the Freedom of the Press 2014 report said.
Bangladesh has slipped down three places in the ranking, published ahead of World Press Freedom Day today.
The country was in 112th position in last year's report, but this year's report ranks it 115th out of 197 nations, with a lower ranking indicating a worse performance.
However, details about the conditions that led to the decline in the ranking were not immediately available.
Last year, the country's press freedom was lambasted on several grounds, including the death of reporters Sarwar Sagar and Meherun Runi, as well as the fact that no one could be convicted following the incident, according to the report.
About overall global trends, Karin Karlekar, project director of the report, said they are definitely negative.
Karlekar said press freedom is under attack in many regions of the world.
"We saw a real focus on 'attacking the messenger,'" she told a news conference, including "deliberate targeting of foreign journalists" in many countries.
"In every region of the world last year, we found both governments and private actors attacking reporters, blocking their physical access to newsworthy events, censoring content, and ordering politically motivated firings of journalists," she said.
Of the 197 countries and territories evaluated in 201.3, Freedom House found 63 rated "free," 68 "partly free" and 66 "not free."
The top-ranked were the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, and the lowest North Korea, which ranked just behind Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The report expressed concern on use of new technologies by authoritarian governments to filter online content and to monitor the activities of reporters.
"Governments have become more sophisticated in their efforts to crack down, even in the online space," said Karlekar.
The report ranked countries on a scale of zero to 100, with the lowest numbers representing the best score, and also compiled an aggregate global number to measure press freedom.
The average global score was at its worst since 2004, and the percentage of people living with a free news media fell to its lowest since 1996, the report said.
The population figures are due in part to the impact of China, rated "not free," and India, "partly free." Those two countries account for more than a third of the world's population.
The I IS remained in the ranks of countries with a" free" press, but fell in global rankings to 30th best, tied with Australia.
The report cited a "limited willingness of high-level (LIS) government officials to provide access and information to