Estonia has a free national press that’s a safe environment to work for both foreign and domestic reporters. According to Reporters Without Borders, Estonia ranks number 11 out of 180 countries in the 2019 World Press Freedom index compared to the US, which ranks 48 out of 180. Estonia also hasn’t had any media-related deaths in 2019, according to Freedom House. Estonia also doesn’t require it’s journalists to have any license or registration; however, if a journalist is working for a foreign media, they need Estonia’s approval and the press card given as evidence of that. There can also be exceptions to that with broadcast journalism.
Like the US, their most popular medium is TV, with a growing interest in online media and decreasing interest in paper media. Estonia is a very technological society, with 91% of the population being on the Internet in 2016 and many activities like voting being done online.
The official language is Estonian, and about a third of the population speaks Russian. The government is stable, and the economy has one of the lowest national debts in the European Union.
Hannah Onder 