Press freedom falls around the world

The glory days of global press freedom appear to be long past, with a Washington-based freedom watchdog organization finding that a retrenchment of press freedoms continued in 2009. In its annual report on press freedom in the world, Freedom House finds an overall decline for the eighth year in a row - with noticeably negative movement in China, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America. The trend is particularly worrying, advocates say, because press freedom often acts as a kind of bellwether of the direction an array of political and social freedoms are taking. the general decline in global press freedom also includes measures taken to rein in the Internet and cyberspace, as governments catch up with new technologies, media experts say.