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According to the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), freedom of the press decreased in Germany last year.

"Due to the many attacks on corona demonstrations, we had to downgrade the situation of press freedom in Germany from 'good' to only 'satisfactory': a clear alarm signal," said RSF board spokesman Michael Rediske in the ranking of press freedom published on Tuesday.

A good year after the start of the pandemic, media professionals in many parts of the world are under more pressure than seldom before. 

According to the balance sheet, independent journalism is largely or completely blocked in 73 of 180 countries covered, and seriously hindered in 59 others.

According to this, freedom of the press is at least significantly restricted in almost three quarters of the world's countries.

The Scandinavian countries and Costa Rica are at the forefront.

Press freedom is worst in Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan and China.

"Respect for the indispensable role of journalism must return"

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Repressive states had abused the pandemic to further restrict free reporting.

But even established democracies had found it difficult to secure the work of journalists during the crisis.

In different parts of the world heads of state and government have incited against the media and created a climate of aggressiveness and mistrust.

Examples are ex-US President Donald Trump or Brazil's head of state Jair Bolsonaro.

"If the world hopefully soon returns to normalcy, respect for the indispensable role of journalism for a functioning society must return," demanded Rediske.

In Germany, according to the ranking, dozens of journalists were attacked at demonstrations against the Corona measures.

The Federal Republic slipped two places back from 11th to 13th place.

In the 2020 calendar year, RSF counted at least 65 violent attacks against journalists in the country, five times as many as in the previous year.

The organization also assumes that the number of unreported cases was higher in the past year than it used to be. 

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The majority of physical and verbal attacks occurred on or on the sidelines of demonstrations against Corona measures, but also during protests against the ban on the left-wing internet platform linksunten.indymedia.org and during demonstrations on May 1st.

Journalists were beaten and knocked to the ground, spat at and harassed, threatened and prevented from working, said RSF.

These countries have improved

As a positive sign of freedom of the press in Germany, RSF assessed the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in May of last year, through which the judges declared the monitoring of global Internet traffic by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) to be unconstitutional. 

According to the results, countries that have improved significantly in the ranking of press freedom in 2021 are mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, above all Burundi, the Seychelles, Sierra Leone and Mali.

Nevertheless, according to the RSF, Africa remains the most dangerous continent for media professionals.

Malaysia, the Comoros and El Salvador, three countries, have seen the biggest drops.

In these states, according to the RSF, the governments want to retain the authority to interpret the corona pandemic with all their might.