The publication covers 194 countries and Croatia is 85th-ranked.
"Freedom of the press is constitutionally protected. Croatian media have gained substantial freedom, and the government has adopted important legal changes in the last few years. A new media law was passed in April 2004 that aims to protect independent media, but a provision stipulates that sanctions can be carried out against journalists who refuse to reveal their sources," reads the Croatian section of the publication.
"Libel remains a criminal offense in Croatia, and two journalists were sentenced to suspended prison sentences for criminal libel during the year. In July, a newspaper editor narrowly escaped a prison sentence for refusing to pay a high fine for libel. Fearing international criticism, the justice minister paid his fine. A large number of libel cases remain unresolved owing to an inefficient judiciary. Implementation of the 2003 Law on the Right to Access Information has been insufficient, and the Croatian Journalists Association reports that access to information deteriorated in 2004," it added.
War crimes and "other sensitive political issues are still difficult to cover for state-run and local media outlets", Freedom House reported.
According to the rankings of central and eastern Europe and former Soviet Union republics, Croatia remained at the 10th place, below Bulgaria but above Serbia and Montenegro that have also been given the status 'partly free' in the assessment of media liberties.
The criteria in the assessment made by Freedom House are described as 'Legal Environment', 'Political Influences' and 'Economic Pressures'.
Countries can be classified into the three categories according to their score of points from the criteria: free, partly free and not free.
North European countries: Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are at the top of the rankings with the best performance in the protection of media freedoms last year.
At the bottom of "Table of Global Press Freedom Rankings 2005" are Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Turkmenistan, and North Korea.
Seventy five countries with the score between zero and 30 points are assessed as free (39 percent), those that have been given the status 'partly free) score between 31 and 60 points. In this category there are 50 countries accounting for 26 percent of all the countries on the list.
The category 'not free' includes 69 countries (35 percent) with scores between 61 and 100 points.