The study, prepared by Dr. Martín Krause, the institution’s Academic Director, analyzes six international methodologies and warns of their high subjective component and their application to the Argentine case. Fundación Faro presented “Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Expression”, an investigation by its Academic Director, Martín Krause, that critically examines the main methodologies used worldwide to measure press freedom and their application to the Argentine case. The work concludes that much of these indicators combine objective data with markedly subjective assessments, often presented as if they were precise scientific measurements.
The report reviews six international benchmarks — Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Fraser Institute’s Human Freedom Index and the Cato Institute, the RTI Rating of the Center for Law and Democracy, Freedom House, the V-Dem Institute and the Bertelsmann Transformation Index — and shows that its conclusions about Argentina are far from uniform. While RSF places the country at 98th place out of 180, with a drop of 11 positions in 2026, Freedom House rates it at 85 out of 100 points, a rating that positions it as a “Free” country and among the best-performing countries in South America, only behind Uruguay and Chile.
The research indicates that much of RSF’s methodology relies on questionnaires answered by experts whose identities and selection criteria are not publicly disclosed, with questions of strong value-laden nature (for example, on the “level of acceptance” or the “degree of support” for the media) that do not have an objective measurement scale. Krause also notes that, in the section of the RSF report itself dedicated to specific attacks — journalists killed, detained, kidnapped or disappeared — there is no Argentine case.
Other indicators revealed a different picture: the Human Freedom Index (Fraser-Cato) gives Argentina 8.18 out of 10 in its category of expression and information; the V-Dem Institute places the country in values comparable to those of nations with high institutional quality in several of its media parameters; and the Bertelsmann Transformation Index improved Argentina’s rating in political participation from 7 to 8.3 points between its last two editions.
The study concludes that, rather than freedom of the press, it is preferable to speak of freedom of expression, a right that transcends journalists and reaches the entire citizenry. According to Krause, the diversity of results among the different indices reveals that much of their measurements depend on the values and ideological perspective of those who compile them, rather than on uniformly verifiable data.
The full report, with the methodological details of the six analyzed indices and the sources used, is available to journalists and interested parties through the following link on the Fundación Faro website: