RSF yearly worldwide press freedom index

[Skybird]

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19388

Several key Western nations like Germany, France, USA, as well as Japan, again are considered to have seen detoriating conditions.

The regional pdf-files seem to have broken links.

[The Avon Lady]

Quote:

"The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.”

Rhetoric. Actually one bing whine.

:down:

EDIT: LOL. This is right now on the radio here, where RWB's rep is whining about reporter's conditions around here.

[Skybird]

Quote:

"The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.”

Rhetoric. Actually one bing whine.

:down:

I fail to see the rethoric. Actually it is no rethoric, but true, and valid law. There have been many journalists over the last months and years who complained that research and investigation has become more difficult due to new laws coming out. We just had a thread about the problem of that real journalism and rejecting the right to protect witnesses and sources are excluding to each other.

But it is not the Us alone. Several European countries have fallen on the list as well:

Germany:
"Germany fell to 23rd place after a series of incidents, including admission by the state intelligence service of its illegal surveillance of the media for more than a decade, prosecution of two journalists of the magazine Cicero for “aiding to betray state secrets”, death threats to a cartoonist on the newspaper Tagesspiegel and problems of access to data since passage of a
freedom of information act (Informationsfreiheitsgesetz)."

Poland:
"Among the 25 EU member-countries, Poland (58th) remains in lowest position because of an
increase in censorship. Prison sentences and fines for defamation and insults to a person’s
dignity or religious feelings are common. An attempt to punish the newspaper Tageszeitung for
“publicly insulting a state institution” after it printed a satirical article about President Lech
Kaczynski is typical of the efforts to control the media by the Catholic/conservative coalition that
came to power in November 2005."

Denmark:
"Denmark (19th) dropped from joint first place because of serious threats against the authors of
the Mohammed cartoons published there in autumn 2005. For the first time in recent years in a
country that is very observant of civil liberties, journalists had to have police protection due to
threats against them because of their work."

France:
"France (35th) slipped five places during the past year, to make a loss of 24 places in five years.
The increase in searches of media offices and journalists’ homes is very worrying for media
organisations and trade unions. Autumn 2005 was an especially bad time for French journalists,
several of whom were physically attacked or threatened during a trade union dispute involving
privatisation of the Corsican firm SNCM and during violent demonstrations in French city
suburbs in November."

Russia:
"The ex-USSR performs worst for press freedom among European countries. The situation in
Russia (147th) and Belarus (151st) has not improved. Russia, which suffers from a basic lack of
democracy, continues slowly but steadily dismantling the free media, with industrial groups
close to President Vladimir Putin buying up nearly all independent media outlets and with
passage of a law discouraging NGO activity."

Japan:
"Rising nationalism and the system of exclusive press clubs (kishas) threatened democratic
gains in Japan, which fell 14 places to 51st. The newspaper Nihon Keizai was firebombed and
several journalists physically attacked by far-right activists (uyoku)."

However:
"Northern European countries once again come top of the Index, with no recorded censorship,
threats, intimidation or physical reprisals in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands, which
all share first place."

[The Avon Lady]

I fail to see the rethoric. Actually it is no rethoric, but true, and valid law. There have been many journalists over the last months and years who complained that research and investigation has become more difficult due to new laws coming out. We just had a thread about the problem of that real journalism and rejecting the right to protect witnesses and sources are excluding to each other
Let's repeat RSF's words:

"Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.”

1. Where have we seen that relationed between the media and the Bush Admin have "sharply deteriorated"? This is a ridiculously subjective term.

2. Why is national security a "pretext"?
pre-text

–noun 1. something that is put forward to conceal a true purpose or object; an ostensible reason; excuse: The leaders used the insults as a pretext to declare war.
2. the misleading appearance or behavior assumed with this intention: His many lavish compliments were a pretext for subtle mockery.
3. All journalists who have questioned "his" (King George the II?) war on terrorism are regarded as suspicious? Where's the proof?

RSF's agenda is anything but hidden. This is an organization with definite frontiers of its own. :down:

You should have spotted these yourself easily.

I repeat: rhetoric. :down:

[Sir Big Jugs]

We win...:lol:

[TteFAboB]

I've dug through that site some time ago.

I believe there is Nobel-syndrome present in their organization. That is, the message they want to pass is more important than the factual reality.

Since reality matters little, it doesn't matter how distorted your rank is. What matters is the number of incidents reported, they aren't really scaled or put into any perspective, so even national security doesn't matter. If we were back in WW2, they'd rank Germany above the USA since there were more newspapers in the USA than in Germany and they would be applying self-censorship. There would actually be no censorship in German newspapers, they would all be freely transmitting the reality, at least that's what they'd tell you.

Bolivia? Jamaica? Ghana? Mozambique? Serbia? It is clear that these rank above the US only because there aren't enough news being published about them.

The USA has lost rank due to the "Bush government", now, I'd like to see which journalist would feel safer speaking against the Bolivian government in Bolivia then. In case you don't know, one of Evo Morales campaign tricks was to incite and unleash attacks on the newspapers he didn't liked, now he has the entire executive branch at his will and has already applied the Trotsky directive: since Bolivia is poor alot of the existing advertisement money is in the hands of the government and state companies (I can't tell you the exact % without researching), Trotsky has said that the opposition in Russia would starve to death, since Morales has cut advertising on any critical newspaper, only by following the official propaganda guide-lines can newspapers and journalists survive. His energy minister who recently resigned because of his dissapointment with Morales unsatisfactory low level of radicalism was a journalist before becoming minister.

Are these things factored into the rank? It doesn't seem so. All that matters are confrontations with governments. But if so then these things can greatly affect confrontations with governments:

1. Who finances the existing newspapers obviously including advertisement? How much money and newspapers are in the hands of the state? If the journalists and the newspapers depend on the state they will not criticize the government nor the state. This fact has a greater effect on the ranking because if the state controls newspapers by financial depedency then there will be no bad news published about confrontations with the government and thus the main ingredient to measure the ranking is missing - if there are no news about such confrontations possibly because there are no confrontations at all you probably won't loose rank. Only because the press is free in the US and consider itself safe to dig deep do they end up confronting the US government.

2. How many newspapers exist and how diverse are they? What is their editorial line? The newspaper may not be owned nor depend on the state, but what if the owner does? What if the owner is receiving money from the government or from the political party on power or from a syndicate/union and thus avoids criticizing and investigating the government? What if the journalists are also on an extra pay roll? How many newspapers are actually investigating anything at all? Does any of this counts? There are alot more newspapers in the USA investigating the "Bush government" than Bolivian newspapers investigating the Morales government, yet somehow this is a sign of less freedom of the press or doesn't matter at all.

3. The government doesn't have to be direct, controlling or owning anybody, but can use fear instead: how often and how many journalists are assassinated, die in car "accidents", dissappear, etc. after publishing something the government/political party/etc didn't liked? How many of these cases, if any, are solved? Do "N"GOs, social movements, party movements, gangs, angry mobs, etc, put pressure or threaten journalists or newspapers? Example: the Netherlands are put on top. I ask, do Dutch journalists feel more free and less constrained by Political Correctness than Americans to write about Islam and Muslims?

4. And finally the law: how many councils, boards, judges, courts, etc. apply censorship? When, how often and about what? How easy or difficult is it to become a journalist? How much can it cost on lawsuits not only from governments but from members of political parties too (this is very important as it is a great disguise)? How easy or difficult is it to start, print and run a newspaper, magazine, blog?

In summary this rank is an abberation because it measures the amount of cases of confronts with governments, not any level of freedom of the press, as such confronts can actually be a sign of the presence of freedom of the press and not its lack. There is an apex, somewhere to the bottom of the list, where it starts loosing any accuracy and becomes based solely on the amount of cases being published and confrontations and not the reality infact. Just answer: do you feel safer to investigate and criticize the Bush government or the Morales government? Of course, there is no merit in this as anybody can point the absence of freedom of the press in Cuba and North Korea easily.

This may be a good site to keep yourself updated on such confrontational cases, but trying to make a rank out of them is doomed to failure when translating it back to reality. Myself, I don't think I am so much more free in Hungary than Australia.

[The Avon Lady]

Bingo: The Political Pit Bull blog on the RSF report (http://www.thepoliticalpitbull.com/2006/10/us_slips_to_53rd_on_press_free.php).