Freedom of the press a major priority in high-ranked the Netherlands

PARIS - The Netherlands ranks in the world’s top-seven with regards to freedom of the press. In the report by the organization Reporters sans frontières, European countries make up the top-ten on the list, while North Korea is at the other end of the scale. The U.S. now ranks 44th, a drop of twenty places over last year, in large part because journalists have been unable to protect their sources, and because of the recent contempt case against a New York Times reporter. Canada and France for similar reasons also dropped a number of spots. New EU-members such as Slovenia, Estonia and Latvia fare much better and are in the top-15. A number of African nations, among then Namibia and Benin, also rank much higher than the U.S.