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U.S. Ranks 17th in Freedom of the Press
reimero writes "According to this article on Yahoo! Germany the U.S. has experienced "serious restrictions" in freedom of the press, according to Reporters without borders' first worldwide press freedom index. Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands came in tops. An interesting study, to say the least."
I wonder if this takes into account private interest groups attempting to censoring, and often succeeding, stories that speak bad of them, a la the scientologist?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Yeah, but things like health care and pensions are not in our Constitution. A *right* like freedom of the press IS protected from Government intrusion by our Constitution. So don't lump these all together.
But I do not believe the problem is any Government intrusion on that right. It's more of a problem of media companies having to compete for ratings by sensationalizing and making sure stories are interesting. In that sense there is no true freedom of press because sometimes the truth is spun or slants are added to make it "interesting". And any "free" news agency that tries to report the actual news that is not one of the big guys (CNN, FOX, etc) is just seen a "conspiracy rag".
Take for example someone trying to write an article pointing out some negative aspects of all the aid money we send to Israel. I'm not leaning one way or the other, but clearly, according to our media big dogs, Israel can do no wrong, so any article like that would be slapped as "anti-Semite" right away, and the newspaper labeled as some backwards commie tabloid. Just an example of what I see as the true limitation of our freedom of press here in the U.S...
Thoughts?
--- witty signature
Uh-huh. And yet -- funny -- the Western European and Scandinavian countries that practice these press freedoms you resent don't seem unpleasant places to live. I mean, people's lives and careers don't seem to get destroyed there any more often than in the US. Their press covers a much wider spectrum of debate than ours. And if you think the US press doesn't frequently label people guilty by inference...
As for "putting forth our own political agendas and parad[ing] our biases as Journalism," have you watched Fox News lately?
There used to be a proud tradition of advocacy journalism in the US. That's what got us most of our labor and sanitation laws, after all.
Journalists try to print articles and get sued for liabel (for printing what they researched) or get sued for revealing corporate secrets (since when is uncovering fraud or embezzelment revealing corporate secrets?) or they end up in jail for treading to close to what the government decides is "sensitive materials".
Even when they do successfully run a story, notice how the story is presented by the same slant from almost all media sources. What good does that do us?
My Russian Professor in college used to regularly speak about how here we pretended to have freedom but had none while in the Soviet Union they had very little freedom but what there was was all REAL freedom. I've heard very similar comments from immigrants from countries noted for their "human rights violations". Clearly there's a need to closely examine things here in the U.S.
we at least have a constitutional amendment protecting our rights
You might want to let John Ashcroft know that.. it seems to have slipped his mind.
This report isn't really unexpected. The reasons are fairly obvious.
The public in the US is mainly educated in political matters by the press, especially cable media. Alternatives to the cable giants, ala BBC are not readily available. The cable media are owned by mega-corporations. It's no surprise that these corporations are interested in preserving their power through economic and political means.
Because money is the main concern, their agenda tends to be a conservative one. Hence they will:
The corporate media own american politics. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
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...that .fr is suddenly the country code for Germany.
The original index of freedom of the press is on a French server. An article ABOUT it was published in Germany.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
Is that malicious, false, and misleading like "Clinton is a sex-fiend" or "CEOs are stealing our pensions?"
B: We have the right to interfere with police investigations putting people lives at risk. Including invalidating/contaminating evidence.
Is that like "Clinton stole a bundle from whitewater" or "We are holding a bunch of people without bail?"
C: We have the right to report secret government information that places security at risk and could result in the deaths of our soldiers and aid our enemies.
Okay, is that like "The US tested nuclear and chemical weapons on its own citizens" or maybe "We have evidence that terrorists will attempt to fly planes into buildings?" Oh wait, that wasn't reported, was it?
D: We have the right to put forth our own political agendas and parade our biases as Journalism.
Sure, biases, whatever. Every goddam thing ever written shows bias, if not in the writing itself, then in the choice of what is written about. If you don't see the bias, it's because it matches your own.
E: We have the right to, without jury or due process, label someone guilty by inference.
Hmmmm, is that like labeling Clinton guilty, or the people in Guantanamo, or Hussein, or is it when we pillory Good, Upstanding CEOs for triffling irregularities?
I question The Journalist, too. Freedom of the press extends to those that own a press, and if you want to work as a journalist, you almost have to work for some fat cat with a press. Said fat cat isn't going to let you print stories that criticize fat cats in any meaningful way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It just goes to show that this article is more about balance in the mainstream press than about the freedom to publish things.
In the U.S. you really can publish most anything you want. Notwithstanding some of the recent DMCA crap and excesses of IP, you are perfectly free to say whatever horrible things you want.
You'll probably never get on CNN saying that slavery is a good idea, but at the same time you can certainly publish your own newsletter if you have the money (or even start your own TV station).
Not so in Canada. The media may be a little less interested in slanting things toward their own political agenda, and a wider range of viewpoints may hit the mainstream public, but that's not near the same as a free press.
Try to have a copy of "The Turner Diaries" in Canada and see how far you get before being arrested for having hateful literature.
No one needs a first ammendment to publish a cookbook.
I wonder what the founding father's opinon would be of it's country being just 'good enough' and 'better than a lot of people'. I'm not particularily a left wing thinker, but I guess I'll spin this to the left anyways. Having a country who guarantees freedom of the press in thier constitution lagging behind countries that have no such beginnings makes you wonder about how much the people of said country care about thier own history. It makes you wonder how much people care anymore about being free as thier own country defines it.
The press is supposed to be more than just somewhere you find out the news. The press is supposed to be an independant check on the integrity of the government and the status quo.
**Standard 'Maybe This is a Troll' Disclaimer**
It wasn't about crossing a police line. It was getting into a security area. Namely buildings.
Probably someone didn't have a dang name tag and didn't make the requisite 5 bazillion calls to a government official to get to their office. Now, because people have heard that terrorists posed as a news crew in North Afghanistan, they don't escort you out over clerical errors, they start freaking out, and that freak out might throw your ass in jail.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but as a journalist in the US, it is nearly impossible to get in touch with a person in the US Govt if they don't contact you first. You sure as hell can't pop by their offices without some rent-a-cop giving you hell about it, or worse. So you see, this listing might not take those factors into account.
Even something as benign as a grain price advisory board is locked up in some big ass building that makes you feel like you're playing Splinter Cell to just get a call back.
Here's the scenario, you know someone that hasn't been honest in the gov't. Well, you're screwed. You don't know their home address and they won't return your call. Worst of all, you can't get to their office to even talk to them because they are at the top of the big government building to get a hold of them. The rent-a-cop is calling them as soon as you walk in the door and escorting you out like a criminal even faster. So if you even need to talk to someone in the Gov't at all AND THEY HAVE AN INKLING THAT YOU ARE AFTER THEIR IMPROPRIETY, you're screwed.
Some days you have to just grow a pair. A lot of journalists do.
So here is how most of that goes:
"Hi, Mister Comptroller. I'm from the news, you know, the group that has been calling you for weeks about you stealing from the government. Care to talk about the fact that you have been locking yourself in this office and the grand jur-"
"Security!!!"
There is an old news addage (now this is just s humourous statement so clam down people) that says that "if you haven't been thrown in jail, you aren't doing your job right."
Trust me, its a joke.
Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.
So? If they were trespassing on high-security areas of government bulidings, what the hell did they expect?
The issue is more about where those security lines are drawn, and who is drawing them. The government should not be allowed to arbitrarily prevent press coverage by drawing a security line.
Watching an hour of CNN, then watching an hour of, say, BBC World or Sky News is a very eye opening experience.
CNN is closer to 24 hour talk shows than to 24 hour news, I'm afraid.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
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Remember, as well, the lambasting that Bill Moyer took for his comments on the Hijackers (( and I fully agree with him on that one -- As much as I may disagree with them, I'm not going to call someone who's willing to die for what he believes in a coward.. Misled and stupid, yes.. but not a coward)).
There were also things like the censorship of anti-WTO protests and protestors in Seattle. The US is far from a fully 'free press' state.
There is also the issue of 'directed' press... Things like various networks pushing the 'popularity' of sister companies' movies as news or supressing news that might make their parent companies look bad. Many companies have gotten so big that, when they start to push for censorship of the press, it's almost as bad as having the government do so.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Wow, so the US arrests journalists who, y'know, break the law? Astounding.
What's your point? That's also why they arrest journalists in the worst countries eg North Korea etc.
Why do american "patriots" so often feel the need to blindly defend the U.S? Saying that the marks are irrlevant, that the european press is more evil and not free at all, and it's some damn liberal plot again.
I thought that patriotism meant love for ones country, not for ones goverment, I thought a patriot of a democracy was supposed to always question anything that might infringe on his freedom or that of others. But it seems that whenever an article like this is seen in the news, the american "patriots" refuse to question their goverment or their nations policy, instead they stand up behind it no matter what and dismiss the criticism as some foreigners and/or liberals having their panties in a bunch.
This is I believe, the opposite of what the founders of the US would have wanted. The US is not the greatest nation on earth simply because patriots say so, even if they yell it from the rooftops or chant it every chance they get. If the US is the greatest nation it is because it allows people freedom, they have freedom to question their goverment and its actions among other things, but it seems that the more patriotic an american is the less they feel a need to question anything. That apathy and contentment is a real danger to democracy, because it means no one is protecting the democratic rights.
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The problem is that the citizens of the US are less interested in freedom every day. Nowhere is this more obvious then the press. The press no longer even pretends to be unbiased or altruistic. It simply reports what the politicians, the police, PR dept of the parent company, or the idology of the owner says.
The press has gone from being watchdogs to being a megaphone for those with money and power.
War is necrophilia.
As some of the posters here have shown quite clearly, Americans tend to confuse an individual's freedom of speech (me and my soapbox) and the freedom of the press (what CNN is allowed to do). This is understandable, since (to simplify it) they have the same legal grounding the Constitution. However, this is not the way most other democracies do things. Germany, for instance, learned about the power of the press the hard way under the Nazi propaganda machine, and therefore distinguishes between Meinungsfreiheit (freedom of speech) and Pressefreiheit (freedom of the press). The press in Germany is considered the "fourth estate" and as such is integrated into the system of checks and balances with special rights and obligations (!). German law also tries to take into account that the media is a multi-million-dollar industry that sometimes tends to try make money first and hunt for the truth later.
So the American posters here who are going "yeah, but you're not allowed to say there wasn't a Holocaust in Germany" are perfectly right, but they are also completely missing the point. That is a question of freedom of speech, not freedom of the press, which is what this study was about. The German press reports all the time about people running around saying there was no Holocaust, and there is not a damn thing anybody can do about it.
This system also gets rid of most of the gripes about the trashy press in the U.S. presented here: The German press has duties as well as rights. For example, you can be sued for Verletzung der journalistischen Sorgfaltspflicht, which could be translated as "journalistic negligence". If you say A did X, you have to prove you really, really tried to get A's own version. Then there are a whole host of privacy laws that are considered a basic right in Europe and are designed to protect the public from the press, a very alien concept to Americans, who are told that the press is protecting democracy when it is broadcasting the photo, place of residence and full name of a four-year-old rape victim.
The second part is that the rest of the democratic world considers the freedom of the press such a very basic and important right that is dealt with at a federal level in federal laws that apply to everybody in the country. So when some American judge in Somewhere, Ohio decides that a journalist has to give up his sources in a murder trial, while a different judge in Somewhere Else, New York in a similar case says he doesn't, this shocks Europeans who have this humanistic belief that the law should treat all people equally, especially when we're talking about basic freedoms.
Americans, on the other hand, don't have a federal law book, and are furthermore stuck with a legal system that never made it past the 18th Century. Trial-by-jury is something that the rest of the free world thinks is only a minor improvement on using a lottery or chicken guts to decide who is guilty. It does not bother Americans that a court in one state or even town will interpret your basic rights differently than another judge a few miles down the road, since they have been told that this is the way it has to be. To the rest of the democratic world, this is as unbelievable as, say, not being able to count your ballots correctly in a federal election.
So basically the study is only examining the different degrees of freedom of the press in different countries, nothing more and nothing less. And by that measure, the U.S. in fact does not deserve a top spot, because the enemies of the press (who at times include the press itself) can and do use the legal uncertainty inherent in the American system against journalists. The question of banning "The Story of O" in Germany or IRA literature in Britain does not enter into it, as valid as these questions would be in discussion of freedom of speech.