DUSHANBE, March 30, 2012, Asia-Plus -- According to the findings of a survey conducted by the Gallup Organization, 56 percent of Tajikistan’s population considers that the local press is “free.”

Meanwhile, 26 percent of those surveyed consider that the local press is “not free” and 18 percent said that they do not know.

Tajikistan has been ranked 95th among 133 nations in terms of their freedom of the press.

Finland (97 percent), the Netherlands, Australia and Ghana are leaders of the ranking and Belarus, where only 23 percent of those surveyed said they felt the local press is “free,” is at the bottom of the list.

Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults, aged 15 or older, conducted in 133 countries between February and December 2011, according to Gallup.  The results have a 95 percent confidence level with the maximum margin of sampling error ranging from plus or minus 2.2 percentage points to plus or minus 5.1 percentage points, it added.

The Gallup Organization, known primarily as Gallup, provides a variety of management consulting, human resources and statistical research services. It has over 40 offices in 27 countries.  World headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Operational headquarters are in Omaha, Nebraska.  Gallup

currently has four divisions: Gallup Poll, Gallup Consulting, Gallup University, and Gallup Press.  The Gallup Organization was founded in 1958, when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization. After Gallup''s death in 1984, The Gallup Organization was sold to Selection Research, Incorporated (SRI) of Lincoln, Nebraska in 1988.