Journalism in Islamic countries

I am a journalism major and I decided to do a little bit of research on how journalism is practiced in Islamic countries. As some of you may know the right to free press is not something that is guaranteed for everyone around the world. I found a “World Press Freedom Index” from Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information around the world. The World Press Freedom Index ranks every country in the world based on how free its press is. I also found a list of the top countries in the world by Muslim population. From the top ten countries Nigeria, which ranks 115th in the world according to the site, has the highest free press rating. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and it ranks 119th in the world. None of the other top-10 Muslim countries from that population list rank higher than 145th in the world.

From looking at the World Free Press Index the realization I came to is that most of the Islam world doesn’t have a very free press.  Roughly 21 million Muslims live in Niger and it ranks 57th in the world. If you made a list of the 25 countries with the largest Muslim population just three of those nations – Niger (57th), Senegal (47th) and Ethiopia (99th) – rank in the top-100 in the world by free press.

For those wondering, the United States ranks 45th on the list of free press in the world. Norway is No.1 in the world. Turkmenistan ranks 179th, the worst in the world.