Malaysia falls 34 spots to 107th in World Press Freedom Index

 

Malaysia placed 107th in Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2024’s World Press Freedom rankings, falling 34 spots from 73rd last year.

For the first time in three years, Malaysia does not top the rankings for Asean countries with Thailand attaining 87th place.

“The threat of defamation proceedings keeps journalists on a short leash in Mongolia (109th), while news sites critical of the government are often blocked in Malaysia (107th),” the report accompanying the index noted.

Last year in August, attempts to access UtusanTV resulted in redirection to a generic government notice claiming a violation of law without specifying the nature of the violation.

Before that in June, MalaysiaNow was partially blocked, as some Celcom and Maxis users reported that they were unable to access the website.

DNS tampering is a common method used in Malaysia to censor “undesirable” online content including pornography, online gambling, and violent extremist sites.

This has also been used to block legitimate news sites in the past, including Malaysiakini’s election results site during the 14th general election in 2018.

However, this redirected internet users to a government notice stating that the website had been blocked by law, rather than resulting in a “connection timed out” error.

Resistance

In the report, Malaysia was described as “a culturally diverse constitutional monarchy. Although the federal government has a draconian legislative arsenal to restrict press freedom, these restrictions are resisted by a vibrant civil society.”

The country attained a score of 52.07 across five indicators: political (44.35), economic (45.63), legislative (34.04), social (52.62), and security (83.72).

The index showed Malaysia’s placement in the same company as the Maldives (106) and Burundi (108).

The rankings for the other Asean countries are as follows: Indonesia (111), Brunei (117), Singapore (126), Philippines (134), Cambodia (151), Laos (153), Myanmar (171), and Vietnam (174).

The report noted that two journalists were killed in the Philippines last year.

Timor-Leste, which is awaiting entry into Asean, ranked 20th, topping the list for Asian countries.

“Although experiencing challenges to the right to information, other regional democracies such as Timor-Leste (20), Samoa (22) and Taiwan (27) have also retained their roles as press freedom models,” the report said.

New Zealand ranks the highest for countries in the Asia-Pacific region at 19, a fall of six places, leaving no country from the region in the top 15.

According to the report, the Asia-Pacific region is the world’s second most difficult for journalists, with the Middle East being the most difficult.

“In the Asia-Pacific region - the world’s second most difficult region to practise journalism - five countries are among the world’s 10 most dangerous countries for media personnel.

“They are Myanmar (171), China (173), North Korea (172), Vietnam (175) and Afghanistan (178),” it commented.

The index ranks 180 countries on the level of freedom enjoyed by journalists and the media.

RSF is an international organisation based in Paris which provides safety resources to journalists and conducts research on the state of press freedom worldwide.

The full index can be viewed here. - Mkini