World Press Freedom Index 2025
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) · Published 2 May 2025
Latest edition: 2 May 2025 · Next expected: May 2027
This ranking is misleading. The expert questionnaire’s respondents are unnamed and recruited through unpublished networks, so the score cannot be reproduced.
What the report claims
The World Press Freedom Index ranks 180 countries on the freedom journalists have to work, combining a quantitative tally of abuses against journalists with a qualitative expert questionnaire scored across five categories: political, economic, legislative, social, and security. India ranks 151st of 180 with a score of 32.96, in the very serious category, up from 159th in 2024 though the score barely moved, which is what happens when a relative ranking shifts under near-identical scores. The questionnaire structure and the category scores are published, and the abuses tally can be checked against public incidents.
The Credibility Score, dimension by dimension
- Methodology transparency / replicability
- 5 / 20
- Source verifiability + measurement integrity
- 5 / 25
- Internal consistency of India’s place
- 8 / 20
- Construct validity / India coverage
- 4 / 10
- Independence and funding
- 4 / 20
- Accountability (corrections, versioning)
- 2 / 5
Funding and independence: Reporters Without Borders is an advocacy organization whose charter is to defend press freedom, and it campaigns and comments on governments, including India’s. It is funded by French and European public subsidies, foundation grants, and private donations, with major partners named and organizational accounts released, but a complete current list of every funder with amounts tied to the index is not established. No published rule separates funders or campaign staff from expert selection and scoring.
Sources: Reporters Without Borders (RSF), World Press Freedom Index 2025
Updated 9 November 2026