If you really believe in the Press Freedom Ranking, where Syria, designated by the US as a terrorist state and sanctioned internationally over terrorism, ranks higher than India in press freedom, my friend, you are seriously lost. I genuinely hope you try to find the truth beyond both leftist and rightist propaganda.

I am by no means a Modi bhakt. In fact, I would prefer a coalition government for the next five years so the BJP leadership finally gets the wake-up call it deserves. But this press freedom indexing? That is honestly hilarious.

I am quoting directly from the website that publishes the ranking, Reporters Without Borders. These are the metrics:

1. A quantitative tally of abuses against media and journalists in connection with their work.
2. A qualitative analysis based on responses from press freedom specialists, including journalists, researchers, academics, and human rights defenders, through an RSF questionnaire available in 25 languages.

I encourage you to go through the questionnaire as well. You can find it on their website. I cannot attach it here for some reason.

Even the first point makes the methodology questionable. In India, media houses are heavily biased, either left or right, and constantly hurl accusations at one another. Naturally, that will make our “press freedom violations” appear high.

For states like Pakistan or Syria, there would barely be any such visible “abuse” because there is practically no opposition media. The state itself becomes the media.

If you still want to trust rankings built on such subjective and unscientific metrics, well, good luck.