While much of Asia backslides, Taiwan remains a bastion of media freedom.

The Diplomat
Date: April 27, 2018
By: Shannon Tiezzi

The Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released its annual World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries according to “an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists.” The 2018 report was overall a pessimistic one, with RSF noting in its summary that “[h]ostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries.”

There were some bright spots, however, one of which is Taiwan.

Taiwan placed 42nd out of 180 countries, making it the highest-ranking country in East Asia, just ahead of South Korea at 43rd. That’s not an aberration. In fact, RSF chose Taiwan as the location for its first Asia bureau, which opened in 2017, in part because of “its status of being the freest place in Asia in our annual Press Freedom Index ranking.”

New Zealand (eighth) and Australia (19th) topped the rankings for the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea were the only Asia-Pacific countries to be placed in RSF’s “fairly good” category, with New Zealand as the lone “good” representative. Fellow democracy Japan fell into the “problematic” category, while much of the rest of Asia was considered either “bad” (India, Pakistan, and most of Southeast Asia, for example) or “very bad” (China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea) for press freedom.    [FULL  STORY]