Bhutan moved 14 places up in the 2019 Press Freedom Index, released by France based international non-governmental organization, Reporters Without Borders. Bhutan is ranked 80th out of 180 countries this year.
While the ranking has improved, as per the Bhutan Media Foundation (BMF), the Bhutanese media and people should not get too excited or worried about the press freedom ranking.
“This year it’s a big surprise Bhutan has improved 14 places, which it doesn’t reflect the ground realities here. In the past one year, I haven’t seen any change in terms of press freedom. So I don’t think we should be too much excited or too much worried about the ranking going up and down by the year,” Needrup Zangpo, the Executive Director of BMF, said.
“What the numbers don’t tell us is that we have a different situation here, our ground realities are different and probably it is one group of people sitting somewhere in America or France or some other countries who are coming up with these figures and giving us ranking every year.”
The report claimed the level of self-censorship continues to be very high in the country. Many journalists avoid covering sensitive issues in the fear of appearing to challenge the social order.
“Self-censorship or censorship generally is not necessarily bad because every society has censorship in general and self-censorship in particular. Bhutan has quite a high level of self-censorship because we are a small society, close-knit society, we have a lot of sensitivity, a lot of sensibilities to take care of,” Needrup Zangpo said.
“So while our level self-censorship is high, we should not be worried about this also because some of it may be necessary for our society but our journalists should not be carried away by perceived or real threats from different institutions.”
The report mentioned the main daily newspaper, Kuensel, still belongs to the state while the state-owned Bhutan Broadcasting Service lacks editorial independence.
The report also highlighted that privately owned publications continue to battle sustainability concerns. Among the SAARC countries, Bhutan is ranked at the top followed by the Maldives this year.
