It’s not hard to find examples of governments restricting the flow of news to citizens. But some regimes are more sophisticated than others when it comes to finessing the way they control what their people read, watch and hear. A new league table from the Committee to Protect Journalists shines a light on the world’s most censored countries, and the autocrats who run them.
The world’s deepest information void belongs to North Korea, which is a hermit nation that keeps its citizens in the dark through tight controls on private media and jamming of foreign broadcasts. Its control is especially virulent at home, where the government retains a legal monopoly on broadcasting and journalists toe the line for fear of retribution. In addition to jamming international radio stations, the state uses sophisticated signal detection equipment to thwart even satellite transmissions from Eritrea and other countries in exile.
In second place on CPJ’s list is Saudi Arabia, which the group says employs a mix of old-style brutality and advanced technology to crush dissent and control the news. The regime jails and harasses journalists, blocks websites and uses a sophisticated surveillance apparatus to monitor domestic and international social media. It also blocks virtual private network services and restricts internet speeds and download capacities to discourage access to banned material.
Iran, China and Vietnam follow, and each has a different method of stifling freedom of speech. The Iranian government employs “sophisticated filtering to block content,” while the Chinese Communist Party censorship system known as the Great Firewall is perhaps the most comprehensive in the world, according to CPJ.
The rest of the top 10 includes Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea and Belarus, each of which controls its own media while punishing its critics with arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. “The internet was supposed to render censorship obsolete, but that hasn’t happened,” CPJ executive director Joel Simon said in a statement. “The worst offenders combine old-style brutality with modern technology to silence dissent.”
It’s worth noting that many of these states are highly wired, with active online communities and populations. That doesn’t necessarily make them any less repressive, though. While it is possible to access the internet outside these states, it’s often a difficult task in practice and the censorship is often complicated by strict laws, draconian criminal defamation laws, digital monitoring and targeted hacking. Still, it’s not impossible to get around some of these restrictions by using proxy servers and VPN services. The full league table can be found on CPJ’s website. It includes a map showing the distribution of free and restricted internet access in each country. It is updated frequently. The rankings are based on a wide range of indicators, including: restrictions on privately owned or independent media; criminal defamation laws; restrictions on the dissemination of false news; blocking of websites; surveillance of journalists by authorities; license requirements for media; and targeted hacking or trolling. The rankings do not take into account war zones, where conditions for journalists are often particularly harsh.