Top 10 Worst Countries to be a blogger

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has published a list of the worst 10 countries to be a blogger. They are, in order:

1. BURMA

2. IRAN

3. SYRIA

4. CUBA

5. SAUDI ARABIA

6. VIETNAM

7. TUNISIA

8. CHINA

9. TURKMENISTAN

10. EGYPT

CPJ asked a series of questions to determine the list, including whether a country has an agency that monitors the Internet, whether bloggers have to register with the government and the degree of self-censorship.

For the CPJ, bloggers are defined as those:

" whose work is reportorial or fact-based commentary to be journalists."

However, I think there does need to be a greater distinction here between professional journalists working for specific organisations - many of whom blog - and those bloggers for whom the process of blogging is undertaken in a 'citizen journalist' basis.

The problem being, that this is no longer an easy distinction to make. What makes a blogger professional: being paid, being hosted by a media group? If you take a look at a detailed list of the top ten, most of the individuals CPJ mentions cannot be firmly defined as a citizen or a professional blogger. Is a jailed Egyptian blogger a citizen or professional? What if some of his work, some of the time, was published on an independent website for the Egyptian community in the West? It's not a simple dividing line.

Still, the fact remains that professional journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists, reporters, photographers and those in every role inbetween in the media are still subject to harassment, censorship and in the worst cases, torture and death, from regimes all over the world.

Groups like the CPJ are though, in a good position to raise awareness through the very same online community those suffering are part of.