The "Freedom of the Press" index assigns each country a place in the ranking and provides a detailed country report. The countries are assigned a value from 0 (best) to 100 (worst), which is obtained from a questionnaire with 23 methodological questions and 109 indicators . These indicators can be divided into three categories: the legal environment, the political environment and the economic environment.
The legal environment (0–30 points) includes, on the one hand, regulations that could influence media content and, on the other hand, the government's tendency to restrict the work of the press through these laws. Freedom House judges in this category u. a. the constitutional guarantees for freedom of the press, the penalty for defamation and defamation, the independence of the judiciary and the media regulatory authorities, as well as the licensing requirements for media companies and journalists.
The category of the political environment (0–40 points) is defined by the possible control of politics on the media content. The editorial independence of the media, access to information and sources, official censorship and self-censorship, the variety of news available, the presence of local and at the same time foreign reporters, and intimidation of journalists are examined.
The category of the economic environment (0–30 points) includes the ownership structures of the media as well as the transparency and concentration of ownership. Furthermore, the costs of the production and distribution of the media, the extent of corruption and the influence of bribery on the media content as well as the extent of the influence of the economic situation of a country on the development of the media are considered.
The place in the ranking of a country is formed from the totalized values in these three categories: with a value from 0 to 30 a country is considered free, from 31 to 60 as partially free and from 61 to 100 as not free.