Much has been made of the recent release of the annual Freedom of the Press Survey and accompanying map. The news about Israel is better than it’s been but not as good as it could be.

The watchdog agency Freedom House looks at press freedom around the world, and the results are generally nauseating. A very limited percentage of countries possess the protections necessary to ensure an open, inquisitive and meaningful journalism environment. Massive restrictions exist across the globe, with consequences ranging from censorship to prison time to, in the worst cases, journalists never being heard from again.

The title of 2013’s report pretty much tells it all at a mile-high level: “Press Freedom in 2013: Media Freedom Hits Decade Low.” By the group’s standards, only 14 percent of the world’s population lives with sufficient safeguards on press freedom.

North America, Europe (which sustained some significant downgrades in the latest survey), Australia, New Zealand and Japan are notables among those nations fairly consistently in the group considered most desirable from a free press perspective. The United States is not immune from criticism by any means, however, as demerits have arisen from issues such as the Edward Snowden-National Security Agency disclosures and journalist surveillance. Protection of journalistic sources also needs upgrading here at home.

The report discusses how both governmental and private sector suppression has increased across the globe, and then relates how many countries have gone downhill from that perspective: “These factors were behind the majority of the status downgrades for 2013, including the shifts from Partly Free to Not Free in Libya, South Sudan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Zambia. Significant declines also occurred in the Central African Republic, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Kenya, Montenegro, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda.”

You may note that a bunch of those are in and around the Middle East, and you’d be right. It’s not a corner of the world known for promotion of free speech.

Except, of course, when it comes to Israel, which has stood far beyond its neighbors in vibrant and open dialogue, discussion and support of free speech. In many ways, the Jewish State’s commitment to open dialogue has emulated that of the West.

But not always, from the perspective of the Freedom House staff. 2012 saw a downgrading of Israel’s status, only to increase its standing back to the “Free” media category in 2013. Here’s what the report said:

“A regional outlier due to its traditionally free and pluralistic press, Israel…regain(ed) its status of Free. Several challenges to media freedom remain, including military censorship and the use of gag orders to restrict coverage, curbs on journalists’ freedom of movement, political interference at the public broadcaster, and the impact on sustainability in the print sector by the free paper Israel Hayom, which is openly aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, there were no serious legal charges and fewer reported cases of physical attacks or harassment against journalists during 2013, marking the lowest rate of violence since 2010.”

A good interview appeared in Moment online by Rachel Gross with survey director Karin Karlekar, who made a point of indicating that Israel “is really a complete outlier in the Middle East” for its press freedoms. The diversity of the country and its press contributes mightily, she said: “There are a lot of opinions being expressed from all sides of the political spectrum. Part of this is because there are many slices of Israel. Just on a linguistic level, you have news outlets catering to the Hebrew market, the Arab market, the Russian market, the English market. Because of the diversity of Israeli society, media have been established that cater to those markets.”

Not so stellar, Karlekar noted, is Israel’s treatment of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank. There’s a separate rating, however, for Israel’s conduct in this regard, which does not impact the nation’s main one.

Overall, we should be extremely proud of the Jewish State as a bastion of open discussion, dialogue and an abundance of media outlets reporting widely on critical topics. We should not, however, be satisfied with a comparative stance that places Israel above the very low bar established by its Middle East neighbors, any more than we should accept the restrictions placed upon journalists in the U.S. We hope that Israel remains in the “Free” category in future assessments and continues to hold media and journalists’ speech rights and access as a high priority within its society.