Looking at their methodology, I can’t help but want a bit of transparency. I cannot believe who they had scoring the list, and I think that it is a sign of their lack of seriousness that they not only went about it this way, but also that they did not release the questionnaire responses along with the report.

All told, the big differences between their report and Freedom House’s is that Freedom House’s will be occasionally be used by academics as a fairly objective and realistic measurement and that RSF’s reports will continue to get far more attention due to its apparently more effective press releases.

I have not taken Reporters without Borders’ ratings seriously since last years when their representative interviewed me about the media situation in Tajikistan. She was probably one of the most unprofessional employees of international organizations that I have met in my life. I hope she was only an exception.

Tax authorities sealed the offices and equipment of the country’s last independent TV station, Somonien, in Dushanbe, on the orders of the state broadcasting committee. Iskandar Firouz, correspondent for the Persian service of the BBC, was physically attacked by a political party official in the capital on the eve of parliamentary elections. Jumaboy Tolibov, jailed for two years after writing three reports in the daily paper Minbari Khalk and in the parliamentary paper Sadoi Mardum criticising the Sogd regional prosecutor, was freed on 16 December 2005 after international pressure.

That\’s all. Nothing else. I think it does not say anything.