Group: Americas saw greatest deterioration of press freedom

WASHINGTON (AP) — A press advocacy group says the Americas saw the greatest deterioration in press freedom of any part of the world during the last year.

The 2019 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders shows Nicaragua falling 24 places and El Salvador 15 from the previous year. Poor performance in other countries brought down the regional score measuring the level of press freedom constraints.

Costa Rica continues to be the best-ranked country of the Americas in 10th place among 180 countries evaluated, well ahead of Canada and United States. Cuba is at the other end.

The group’s index assesses six separate benchmarks and assigns each country a score calculated from answers to a questionnaire in 20 languages that is completed by experts around the world.