11 Worst Countries for Journalists in 2015

Working as a journalist is rewarding, but there’s nothing that can compare to having to do your job under duress, under censorship, under fear for your life, much like it happens in these 11 worst countries for journalists in 2015.

When you try to find out the truth and expose corruption and wrongdoings to the eye of the public, you’re unavoidably going to create some enemies. Some, the more civilized kind, will just accept that they shouldn’t have done the wrongs that you’re exposing them for, although we’re mostly talking about some utopian situation here. No, the most civilized of the lot will resent you for life, but they’ll keep it all to cursing you under their breaths or even outright in the open. The worst of them will have you killed.

wellphoto/Shutterstock.com

Although it may seem difficult to comprehend at times, there are areas in this world where the press is not free, it’s not free to write about whatever it wants, and it’s certainly not free to write about all that it unearths during various investigations. That’s assuming those investigations even take place because most of the times journalists encounter solid walls which they can’t bypass, no matter what they do. Yet, these places exist and the bumps in the road are often laid out by government officials, politicians, and wealthy businessmen.

Even worse, on top of censorship and the lack of freedom that journalists encounter, there are countries where this job can be equal to a death sentence. Some of the countries on this list are also, unsurprisingly, present on the list of the 11 worst governed countries in the world.

In order to put together our list, we took a look at several charts published by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders regarding censorship, press freedom, as well as journalists jailed or killed on the job. We handed out points for each category and added them up resulting in our final list of 11 worst countries for journalists in 2015.