Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has ruled the country since 2002, and there has been widespread controversy over press freedom in the country, with many doubting that such a freedom even exists. As a matter of fact, the US-based watchdog Freedom House's “Freedom of the Press 2014” report has downgraded Turkey from the category of “partly free” to “not free” because of what the institution called “the worsening media freedom situation.”

Press freedom in Jordan regressed last year, particularly after changes to the country’s publications and press law and government moves to block hundreds of online media sites, a new report has revealed.

China doesn’t just exert heavy control over state media; its influence over media outlets outside China is expanding, according to a new report by Freedom House. For the past three years, the government has been investing millions of dollars in a global soft-power push. State newspaper China Daily publishes inserts of its English edition in major Western papers from the Washington Post to the New York Times. China’s Central Television, or CCTV, has hired dozens of experienced reporters from the US for its Washington bureau and rivals other foreign operations like Al-Jazeera America.

Internet freedom in countries around the world has declined sharply in the past year despite a pushback from activists that successfully blocked some governments’ repressive laws, according to a new report. The study, by advocacy group Freedom House, looked at online trends in 60 countries, evaluating each nation them based on obstacles to access, limits to content and violations of user rights.

Yesterday Freedom House released a report on Internet censorship in China based on information they collected for their Freedom on the Net survey. The report is especially interested in Internet censorship since the leadership transition that brought Xi Jinping to power last November. It not only examines the obstacles citizens face in getting Internet access, but also on what is censored, surveillance, and how citizens are punished by the state for their activities online.