Mass media disseminate misleading news on Armenia’s “freedom index”

On December 21 news.am news website published a news item, which states that “Armenia ranks the 22nd in the rating of Freedom Barometer.”

The media outlet writes “Armenia occupies the 22^nd position in the Friedrich Naumann Foundation rating for 2017 in terms of quality of freedom.”

However, news.am did not mention that according to this report Armenia ranks 22nd among 30 countries. Moreover, as it is not specified that the report concerns the region, the reader may have an impression that the index is global. Whereas, the matter touches upon 30 countries among which, Armenia’s index is, in fact, not the best.

One day after the publication of News.am, this news was also published by armtimes.com again without specifying that the report refers to 30 countries. Moreover, the media outlet has added the “international rating” to the title of the article, which further distorts the reality.

“Freedom Barometer Asia” is a project of the German Friedrich Nauman Foundation’s South East and East Asia office. It explores the economic, civic, and political freedom levels in the given region as well as in Europe and Central Asia.

In the 2017 report, Armenia improved its index by one position compared to that of last year. In the previous report it ranked the 23rd. According to the 2017 report of Freedom Barometer the highest level of freedom has been registered in the Netherlands. The last 30^th position is occupied by Russia.

By the way, according to a report for 2017 by another prestigious organization- the Freedom House, freedom in Armenia has gained 45 points by 100-point scale (0 is the negative index and 100 is the positive index in the scale, meaning that the most free country gets 100 points while the not free country gets 1 point).  The organization considers the country to be “partly free.” Countries such as Pakistan, Malasia, Mali and Honduras have similar index.