The global rise of authoritarianism, illustrated in four charts


By Sriram Sharma

What are the best and worst places to be a journalist in the world? We take a look at Freedom House's data to find out..

This animated bar-chart shows a 20-year ranking of the worst countries for press freedom.

(A higher score indicates the degree of suppression of the press by the state. 0-30 = Free, 30-60 = Partly Free, 60-100 = Not Free)

The worst country for press freedom is..

North Korea. But there are dozens of other contenders.

These are best countries to be a journalist, the ones which enjoy the best scores in terms of press freedom

A country must score below 30 points for its press to be considered "Free".

A lower score indicates higher press freedom...

Note that only one country — Norway — has a press freedom score below 10 in the latest press freedom ranking.

Let's take a look at how G20 countries fare:

Sadly, G20 countries are no exception to this trend of rising antipathy towards the press.

In 2000, only two G20 countries were Not Free (a score higher than 60). By 2017, there were five.

I think it's safe to call it..



The world is slowly inching towards authoritarianism

Built with Flourish, Google Data Studio, OpenRefine, and Scrollama, as part of a submission to the Journalismcourses.org MOOC titled Data Journalism and Visualization with Free Tools.