The Hungarian press has retained its "free" qualification in the annual report on global press freedom released by the non-profit human rights organisation Freedom House in Washington on Friday.

Hungary received altogether 21 scores on Freedom House's scale of press freedom, the same score given to the country in 2008. The organisation ranks the countries of the world on a scale from 0 to 100 points, where the maximum means the worst rating. The media of the examined countries are termed "free" in the range from 0 to 30 points.

With this score, Hungary tied for 33rd place with Austria, Belize, Japan and Micronesia out of the 195 countries and territories covered by the report.

The report drew the main conclusion that press freedom had declined worldwide in 2008.