CIMA’s Country Profiles are drawn from a variety of organizations that monitor and evaluate the media in countries around the world. The three primary media evaluators are Freedom House (Freedom of the Press), IREX (Media Sustainability Index), and Reporters Without Borders (Press Freedom Index). Each of these indexes measures a different aspect of press freedom, thus a direct comparison would be inaccurate.

The goal of CIMA’s Country Profiles is to provide users with a compilation of the many resources on the state of media in the world and to point them in the right direction if they want further information. None of the information provided in these profiles was researched or written by CIMA–it all comes from other sources.

The comparison charts provided for some of the Country Profiles were developed by re-weighting the numbers provided by IREX, Freedom House, and RSF. As stated above, these indexes do not measure the same aspects of media freedom, so these graphs should not be viewed as a comparison of the ratings, but rather as a comparison of relative trends over time. In many countries, this comparison is limited by the limited number of index numbers at this time. As each of these indexes continues in the future, comparisons will improve.

To graph these index numbers in a way that such comparison is possible, CIMA had to adjust the numbers slightly. For simplicity’s sake, the scores were adjusted to be out of a total of 100, where a higher score indicates a better media environment.

• IREX‘s MSI rates sustainability of the media out of a maximum score of 4.00, with higher scores indicating a more sustainable media. To make the scores appear out of 100, they were multiplied by 25. These scores are only available in Europe & Eurasia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Africa. In the latter two regions, it is difficult to demonstrate trends because IREX began rating them relatively recently.
• Freedom House rates media freedom within countries out of a maximum score of 100, with lower scores indicating greater media freedom. To make these scores comparable to others, CIMA subtracted them from 100, so that a higher score would indicate greater media freedom.
• Reporters Without Borders rates countries out of a maximum score of about 100, with a lower score indicating more press freedom. To make these scores comparable to others, CIMA subtracted them from 100, so that a higher score would indicate greater media freedom.

Again, CIMA would like to remind our users that even the adjusted scores should not be viewed as direct comparisons. Rather, these graphs demonstrate trends in media freedom over time. As this data was generated by other organizations, neither the scores nor the descriptions represent CIMA’s opinion of media in specific countries.