Contrary to the conventional wisdom here that U.S. media are the freest in the world, the United States has suffered ''notable setbacks'' in press freedom and has slipped among countries tracked by the New York-based rights group Freedom House.
The organisation, in an annual survey released in advance of Tuesday's commemoration of World Press Freedom Day, said media in Finland, Iceland, and Sweden faced the fewest fetters in 2004 while the most restrictions were slapped on journalists in North Korea, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Cuba, and Turkmenistan.
The United States was tied with Barbados, Canada, Dominica, Estonia, and Latvia at 24th place out of 194 countries covered in the survey.
Countries were scored based on three broad categories: the legal environment in which media operate, political influences on reporting and access to information, and economic pressures on content and the dissemination of news.
Freedom House said the U.S. score declined in part because of ''a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations.''
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