Mass media in Latvia

Latvia is one of the three post-Soviet Baltic states having regained independence in 1991 and since 2004 is a member State of the European Union.[1] After its independence there have been fundamental changes of political, economic and social nature that have turned Latvia into a democratic country with a free market economy.[2] This reflects on the mass media landscape which is considered well-developed despite being subjected to a limited market and a linguistic and cultural split[3] between Latvian (58.2%) and Russian speakers (37.5%).[2] In 2017 Freedom House defined Latvia's press freedom status as “free", assigning to the country's press freedom a score of 26/100 (with 1 corresponding to the most free status).[4] The 2017 World Press Freedom Index prepared annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) states that media in Latvia have a "two-speed freedom", underlying different levels of freedom for Latvian-language and Russian-language media. According to RSF's Index the country is ranked 28th among 180 countries.[5]

  1. ^ Edmunds, Timothy; Cottey, Andrew; Forster, Anthony (2013-10-18). Civil-Military Relations in Post-Communist Europe: Reviewing the Transition. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-97043-9.
  2. ^ a b Juzefovičs, Jānis (November 2011). "Mapping Digital Media: Latvia" (PDF). Open Society Foundations: 12.
  3. ^ "Latvia profile". BBC News. 2016-04-25. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
  4. ^ "Latvia". freedomhouse.org.
  5. ^ "Latvia : Two-speed freedom - Reporters without borders". RSF.