Study finds restrictions on press freedoms tighten across the globe.

Freedom of the Press 2010: A Global Survey of Media Independence, a study conducted by Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization, registered declines in press freedoms in nearly all corners of the world. This is the eighth consecutive year such declines were recorded by Freedom House, where a sorry one out of six persons is considered to be living in a country that can claim a free press. In fact the only region to boast improvement is Asia-Pacific, where gains were attributed to transformations in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Maldives.

Restrictive laws, violence against journalists, political conflict and heightened governmental grasp on Internet freedoms are among the standard batch of explanations for freedom’s grim status. The “globalization of censorship,” was also indicated, specifying countries like China and internal groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

See IFEX for more on the study.