Mr Ramgoolam has rejected claims by Reporters sans frontières (RSF), an international campaign group for press freedom, that he wants to silence independent journalists and control the press. RSF condemned comments by Mr Ramgoolam against L'Express newspaper at a rally of the ruling coalition on May 1st, when he accused it of being the mouthpiece of the opposition Mouvement militant mauricien (MMM) and described the editor as not being worthy "to shine my shoes". Mauritius was ranked 65th out of 178 countries by RSF in its 2010 Press Freedom Index, a fall of 14 points on its 2009 position. The comments were also condemned by the MMM leader, Mr Bérenger.

Mr Ramgoolam hit back at RSF on May 17th, accusing it of not verifying its facts and said that, although the press had the right to criticise, it also had to accept criticism. He said that he was not criticising objective reporting, but the deliberate distortion of facts and the unfair and biased stance of one section of the media. This was a clear reference to La Sentinelle, the media group which owns L'Express and which has long been the target of government criticism and was even excluded from press conferences during the 2010 election campaign (July 2010, The political scene). The affair has heightened concern that the government's planned media reform legislation (July 2010, The political scene) will actually fail to promote the freedom of the independent press and that tight government controls on the state-owned Mauritian Broadcasting Company will be retained.