Slashdot Mirror
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."
Sorry to bother you, but freedom of press in the US has been in jeopardy at least since Kennedy's murder.
In other news, the US government is about to bomb a country for the second according to oil priorities and economic agendas. Film at 11.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.
Crossing security lines at official buildings is illegal. I don't see how being prosecuted for this is such an important factor in the descision.
While I feel that reporters should not be prosecuted for refusal to reveal sources, the crossing of SECURE LINES is ridiculous.
I would also like to point out that the US is in the 10th position as the other countries were tied for their spots.
Not to say that the US doesn't deserve its rating, just pointing out some things from the article.
I live in British Columbia. About two years ago the Nisga'a Treaty was being heavily debated within this province and lesser so throughout the country.
A fair chunk of the newspapers in the interior of British Columbia are owned by one man (I forget his name). And he did not allow any of his editors to write editorials in favour of the Nisga'a Treaty. How is that for freedom of the press.
The survery claims to asked questions relating to state monopolies. But did they ask about monopolies in general?
Organizations like Reporters Without Borders always have some sort of political slant to them, regardless of what their official position is. (The fact that the site's hosted out of France might give you a hint which way they might lean.)
The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court.
Journalists being arrested (and, most likely, promptly released on bail) because they refuse to release their sources. That's fine. That means our legal system is still working to determine the precise weight of journalistic freedom against a victim's right to a fair trial.
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?
I hope the Slashdot audience will take two seconds to look at this ranking critically and realize exactly how little it really means. America still guarantees an degree of freedom of speech and freedom of the press that even many European countries don't enjoy.
And I'm not totally sure about Norway being that good. For instance, hardcore porn is banned in Norway.
You will also get a slap on your fingers if you publish and publically distribute racist material. I'm not sure of the limit, but "White Election Alliance" (directly translated from "Hvit valgallianse") a neo-nazi, racist political party got a fine and a slap on their fingers for distributing a policical program that asked for the sterilization of all adopted kids from third world countries.
I'm generally pretty happy with the freedom here though, but it's not like it is "anything goes".
We do NOT however ban bad language from public television. If people want to say "fuck", or the norwegian translation "pule" on the air, they are perfectly entitled to do so.
Reporters without Borders is censored at my work. Nice irony. =)
On a separate note, does anyone know how feasible it would be to click on the Scientologist's Google Adword Links and cost them some $$$? There must be some way to automate the process. ;)
.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
It would have been interested to see if there is a copy of these ratings pre-september 11th. I'm not sure if an entire countries freedom of the press should be based on the single most catastrophic to happen to it in recent history.
Europe is much more restrictive of press than the US.
The EU is about to put forth a plan making it a crime to say anything that offends Gays or Religions. Books in Canada were destroyed and a man was arrested because those books said that Israel had a right to exist and they considered that it too inflammitory. Swizerland is about to change their constitution for this.
England recenlty arrested a professor for calling Muslims backward during a heated arguement with a muslim student who said that Americans deserved to die and Osama Bin Laden was a great man.
If you ever look at EU, you will see them daily condeming Israel for the slightest reaction. They even want to rebuild suicide bombers houses. They have pumped billions into the palestinian authority without every checking it out because journalists are scared of being arrested.
This is a pretty useless study and Slashdot overreacted to it as it usually does whenever somebody mentions free speech, Anti-US, and anything that involves computers.
Furthermore, I'd say that quite a few countries with what appears to be high levels of press freedom to me (such as the United Kingdom and Hong Kong) ended up scoring below the US in any case. This could be a situation where you really don't start to get that bad until you pass like 10 points (the lowest countries are in the 90s on their scale!), which wouldn't happen until level 30. So it doesn't look like it's that horribly anti-US biased, it just looks like it's tracking a number of things that we don't usually look at in terms of press-freedom.
If anything, the survey is a little flawed because it seems to treat an arrest of a journalist as an arrest of a journalist, regardless of reason. Imagine that I write for a newspaper (let's say it's a revolutionary Maoist newspaper). The fact that I work for that newspaper won't get me thrown in jail in the US. But let's say I go to cover an anti-capitalism parade, and get caught up in the rioting and start throwing molotov cocktails, and get arrested. That arrest is hardly equivalent to someone getting arrested just for writing in the Maoist newspaper to begin with. I suppose the trouble is that it's very difficult, in dealing with 140 countries, to say "that arrest was political" and "this arrest was because of a legitimate journalist stance" and "the other arrest was unrelated to journalist activities," so you have to just lump everything together under the question of "how likely do you feel you are to get arrested?" Well, a number of journalists in the US apparently feel like that's possible given our laws on revealing sources, so there you go.
According to the article, the US is lower because of things like reporters being arrested because they're reporters doing their job. The examples (also handily in the article) is journalists being arrested for not revealing sources in court or crossing police lines. The US won't lose points because of major media companies unless they are run by the government.
I was unable to bring up the article in question, but what restrictions do we (I live in the United States) have in regard to our media? Are our anti-defamation laws or restrictions against attacking one's character the cause for our 17th place finish? Maybe it's because I have never worked in any job even remotely related to journalism, but I cannot summon up any examples of censorship in our media, persay. When it comes to our television, music, and movies, then yes, we are censored quite a bit.
In the Netherlands, there is a lot of interesting news to be covered. For example, how america is ignoring all treats, going to war withouth a reason, sends all foreigners to prison and is arresting people for a little hemp.
In what other countries that are supposedly better than us are the press free to walk out into public with a Swastika armband, yell "HEIL HITLER" at the top of your lungs, and give the Roman salute?
A few Scandinavian countries, I think.
Going to a more serious matter, which of those European countries would allow a true report on the pernicious effects of uncontrolled illegal immigration?
All Western European countries. Freedom of the press is for those who happen to own one. Self-inflicted (or market-inflicted) censorship was not taken into account by this study. (Whatever information a "true report on the pernicious effects of uncontrolled illegal immigration" would contain.)
Most of their presses are so controlled by political correctness that you cannot offend anyone or anything.
Oh, the press happily publishes Hitler comparisons, even if they are politically incorrect.
But who reads that old rag anymore?
Niether "security risk" nor "obstructing justice" is a valid reason (accding to the Constitution) for abridging the freedom of the press.
Amendment I
Canada (#5), recently detained a shipment of pamphlets entiled "In Moral Defense of Israel", to examine them if their content was such that they could be legally imported. The French just tried (and acquitted, true) a man for being uncomplimentary to Islam. And Costa Rica (#15) only "ceased to . . . give prison sentences to those found guilty of 'insulting' public officials" eight months ago.
If we then read why the U.S. is ranked low (not allowing those with knowledge of a crime hide that knowledge even if they are "legitimate reporters", and not allowing people to go behind security lines even if they are "legitimate reporters"), it becomes obvious that what this site means by "freedom of the press" is not freedom of publication (which is the meaning of freedom of the press as used in international human rights treaties), but rather how far the society caters to members of the Fourth Estate.
Just look at the wave of "patriotism" after September 11th. It became more like, "If you question anything the President says, you're considered a terrorist too...".
The big American media companies are just a tool for the government to push people onto "their" way of thinking.
It's all a game of give and take. The media conglomerates contribute big to campaign funding and biased media coverage in return for tax breaks and favors.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
I haven't been able to read the article since it has been slashdotted, but one thing that increasingly bothers me is how the major news organizations are owned by a small number of large corporations. These corporations in turn have a greater say on how we are governed through campaign donations.
:-(.
E QU ALITY.html
I heard that Disney is considering a buyout of AOL/Time Warner. It would then own ABC, CNN, Time Warner and AOL. Imagine that!
Coroporate news outlets are and will be stymied when trying to report things that powerful corporations don't want reported and that's a lot of things.
This combined with the growing power of the very rich means less and less democracy.
See the NY Times Magazine cover story from this Sunday about who the rich are taking over;
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/20IN
My wife and I are British, but lived in Boston, Mass for a few years during the mid eighties. We live in Canada, these days.
When we first arrived there, we thought the news reporting was very narrow so we purchased an HF radio, to listen to the BBC World Service. In those days, the BBC operated a very good news service. It has been reigned in a lot since -- they made the mistake of annoying Margaret Thatcher.
One evening, we heard a report on the BBC about a Bankers conference on the US West Coast. The report contained excepts from a talk given by the (then) chairman of the FDIC and contained pretty strong material. Essentially, he claimed that US banks had over extended themselves with too many bad loans for the FDIC to be able to salvage the situation.
I thought this news would be a major talking point the following day; it wasn't -- no one had heard it. As far as I could tell, in discussions with my co-workers, this news was not available on any outlets generally available to people in Boston. Several of my US friends from that time then went out and bought HF radios.
To this day, I don't know why the FDIC chairman's speech was not reported in the Boston area. Maybe the editors thought the Red Sox were more important than a major bank failure. Perhaps they simply dismissed it as "West Coast" news and therefore unimportant. Maybe the TV stations and local papers did not want to spook the advertisers -- who knows? In any event, the experience was an education.
I have to say I agree. I have learned in order to get well-balanced news, you must read the story at several sources and concentrate on the facts that consistently rise to the top.
I was pointing out the other day that US support of Israel would be but much less if we had an equal amount of Arab lobbyists - instantly I was labeled an anti-Semite and my opinion disregarded. This also happens to all media outlets that say anything non-PC. I am frankly sick of watching Israel do some very fucked up things "in retaliation" of the bombings. Why don't they just move their people out of occupied territories and quit fucking with Palestine? Seems like that would be a start. By the way, I am not an anti-Semite, just someone who sees things as they are.
None of the main stream rags will tell you we are being led to war by a corporate puppet with an 85 IQ either...(that may be inflammatory)
ymmv
Actually, Conrad Black isn't the big news baron of Canada that he used to be, as he sold most of his Canadian interests to CanWest Global. therefore the crown goes to Izzy Asper, in my opinion the greater of the two evils. At least Conrad Black was critical of the federal government and enjoyed dishing dirt on PM Cretien and his cronies. Izzy seems to be a good friend of the prime minister and a significant donor to the federal Liberal party. When editors at Southam newspaper had harsh words to say about our PM, Izzy dressed them down and ordered all his papers to print and article he wrote praising the good job Cretien has done.
Now we have only a handful of players in Canadian media content--the government-owned mouthpiece CBC (only TV and radio though), Bell GlobeMedia (own the CTV network, Globe and Mail, Sympatico internet, Bell ExpressVu digital Sattelite, bunch of radio stations, etc), and CanWest Global (Global TV network, radio stations, most of the National Post, Southam--the largest newspaper chain in Canada, Canada.com internet portal etc.).
Interestingly enough, Bel Globemedia is owned by an enthusiastic Liberal party supporter as well...seems the government doesn't need sensorship when all the media outlets are his defacto campaigners...
Thanks to the internet can choose which news to read. My choice may not be the best choice, but due to this article I think I'll be reading the Icelandian Newspaper in addition to googlenews and slashdot.
Remember if you restrict the press too much you end up with Russia during the cold war. If you don't restrict it enough you end up with the national enquirer. If there is absolute freedom of the press it can become difficult to discern fact from fiction. That's why only the intelligent and the wealthy seem to know what's really going on. The intelligent figure it out and the wealthy pay someone else to.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
[a id=aw2 href=/url?q=http://www.scientology.org&sa=l&ai=AXT CG4Kwt9stkyEphhMMkBYI9DJI-LV78bWgACApTAAv5XEACCA&n um=2 onMouseOver="return ss('go to www.scientology.org')" onMouseOut="cs()"]
The relevent link code is shown above.
If you wrote a perl script to parse for "go to www.scientology.org" as the parameter to ss() in onMouseOver, you could set the script up to use LWP to fetch the google search page for Scientology every 10 minutes and call every paid link to scientology.org on the page..
I think that adwords are per-click.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
We in Europe enjoy considerable freedom of press, and perhaps indeed even more so than the USA. But you're right about the press being biased.
The press here in the Netherlands is politically correct beyond belief, especially when it comes to sensitive issues or politics in general, for which they adhere to a strict set of unwritten rules. Certain questions are not to be asked, and into certain matters one is not to probe too deeply. They are also very biased towards the Labour party, most newspapers and especially national television are. A few choice examples from the recent political events over here:
- When presenting results for local elections, the TV newsreader who read out the result stated that "LN (a right wing party)thankfully did not become the largest party in Amsterdam"
- The entire press condemned mr. Fortuyn (a right wing policician) when he stated that Muslim religion is "retarded". Yet, when a Labour politician stated the same thing in exactly the same words, and was purportedly threatened for that statement, the press collectively hailed her as a brave martyr. She is a muslim herself, so for her it is fine to make such statements apparently.
- When asking the "man in the street" for opinions, they carefully select the interviewees to coincide with the stereotype they wish to perpetuate. People selected for interviews typically are:
* For a right wing voter: either a brainless disgruntled taxidriver who wants more highways, or a well-dressed woman with a pearl necklace, representing the oppressing rich
* For a voter for a populist party: preferably a person who looks like a football hooligan, and is happy to state that he is proud to never vote, only he will this time because he hates immigrants.
* For Labour voters: a very well spoken, articulate and socially engaged person, the perfect example of a concerned citizen, yet still very much a common man/woman and not an elitist intellectual.
With a press like this, freedom of press is meaningless. The USA may know less press freedom but at least the press over there is trying.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I agree that having monopolies dominate the news is a bad thing, but I don't think it should diminish Canada's ranking for freedom of the press.
If there's a well established news monopoly in CountryX, yet I can personally start a publication and post ANYTHING I want, wouldn't that mean CountryX should have a good ranking for freedom of the press? They aren't restricting 'the press' in anyway. Lack of restriction = freedom.
Ok there has been this drive to not consider Scientology as a religion. But that is due to the legal process in Germany and most European states. In Europe religion falls under a very special law. Basically it gives them power to get away with "murder". And they can collect taxes from their followers.
Religion in North America is not treated special, simply like a charity. There are NO SPECIAL POWERS.
And giving away these special powers is not an easy task. Of course Scientology would want these powers like any other group...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
to tell to an american, referring to the DMCA,
the USA is clearly way down the list.
I mean, if in this posting I explain that using a felt marker one can circumvent the copy protection on certain audio CDs thus allowing them to be ripped to mp3, I am breaking the law in the USA and if I ever visit america (heavens forbid) I could be arrested -- for something I typed up in New Zealand!!
Heck, the USA could probably even get me deported.
Free speech in the USA?
I don't think so.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I really don't understand why all the US based people commenting here is so upset.
I currently live in the US and comes originally from one of the 1st place countires. My personal experience is that the papers in these countries are more diversified, they write about more interssting topics, they don't censor as much, the are more controversial, the are MUCH more in-depth than their US counterparts.
This does not only hold water when it comes to reporters, but on almost all areas in life. Unfortunately, US citizens have been "thaught" that US is the best place in the world to live, have the most freedoms, etc. But that is really not the thruth.
What about all the beeps and blurs on TV? You can't say any of "The Seven Words" on radio or TV, neither can you show nudity without a blur. Now that is censorship to me!
And as a comment to the arrest of the reporters that crossed the security lines, why not just escort them to the other side? The US police has a sexual fixation on arresting people. I don't think there is any other country in the world where the police arrest as menay people as in the US for the most ridicoulus reasons. It's liek I sometimes are convinced that the get a bonus for arresting the most every week or so!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Interesting story here about a few of those countries who are ranked higher than the United States. Apparently they have more freedom as long as you don't criticize Muslims...
2 .h tm
An excerpt:
"Variously praised as the painful truth or decried as a "bigoted, anti-Muslim screed," Miss Fallaci's book is under threat of judicial action in France for inciting racial hatred."
and...
"...critics have attempted to ban the book or have her arrested in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy."
However, the article also mentioned that the book was extremely popular in France...
Check it out.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021023-1887459
do some educated reasoning... this report demonstrates the typical relentless ranting of European (in this case, French) supposed superiority. the reports' definitions of "freedom" does not apply to what we Americans consider freedom. sure, some things in europe are better than the US, and the US is better at other things, and this discussion is endless, but understand the bias/skew in a report like this. it is based on different values!
and it may be true about the socialist scandinavian countries being in the top spots. the governments there SUBSIDIZE the reporting of "underreported" (boring) stories. now THAT is agenda-setting! europeans would counter that by saying american media is too much driven by profits. they are free to do so!
And a very recent example, to the contrary of this report, a French author "could have faced up to 18 months in jail or a 70,000 euro (£44,000) fine if found guilty" of "inciting racial hatred by saying Islam was "the stupidest religion"" BBC article here, (Oct 22, 2002)
'2tall'
Maybe the United States should fix itself first before going after the supposed rights of others.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Oh for crying out loud. Give me a break.
I conduct plenty of interviews with people who sometimes don't want to discuss things that I need them to discuss. That's part of the craft of being a reporter. Just to help:
Rule One: Do not be obvious. Ask the official if s/he could discuss pork futures (or whatever) instead of their mishandling of regulation of pork futures. Be as general as possible. It's a game -- play it.
Rule Two: Structure your interview. Save the questions that will clamp them down for last. Ease into it with lots of questions that get them talking.
Rule Three: Go through the stupid PR people. Yes, they tend to obfuscate and block interviews that they don't want to happen. But use your charm, your guile, whatever, to convince them that it's OK for the muckety-muck to do your interview. Once you've won them over, you'll get the higher up to chat and -- using rules one and two -- get your interview.
Rule Four: Find other ways to get at the individual. If you know their name, you should be able to track them down. It may take time, but you can find out where they live and confront them there if necessary. If they're a bureaucrat, they worked with somebody. If they're a political appointee, they probably have a political past that you can check. If they're a politician, read their biography for clues.
Rule Five: Line up as many other interviews as possible. Use it as leverage to get that person to talk. Be relentless. If you can think of one other avenue to pursue, do it.
You would say they need less freedom then they have. The press in the US is generally irresponsible. I remember when they got real irratated on 911 when thay could not broadcast the exact location of Mr. Bush. I remember them being in Waco with the ATF and began a live broadcast 45 minutes before the raid begain. To be in the US press is to love yourself, and all that matters is ratings. If you have a responsible press then give them more freedom, we dont.
Get a free ipod.
The problem with rankings is that the rank is absolute, not relative. So the assumption is that there is an even spacing between ranks so that 16th is as far from 15th as 2nd is from 1st.
But as all of us geeks know that the system could be on a completely different scale (power, exponential, logarithmic, etc).
In short, how much worst is 17th from 1st? In theory the top 20 or so could be so tightly packed that it really is irrelevant. It isn't like the US is in the bottom 10% or anything. Statistics?
Or is this just a subjective poll based on little more than opinion?
What is music when you despise all sound?
...my country Venezuela is #77, and our press says everything on their mind. The problem is, that the goverment takes revenge. They closed all the tv channels on the april 11th strike (silly thing, since one channel has a satellite and jumped off the restriction)
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
I haven't seen anything here that demonstrates that freedom of the press is actually limited in the U.S.
1 - A narrow scope of news available is not an indication of restricted freedom of the press. It is an indication of corporatioins making business decisions. You are free to start a newspaper and print whatever you wish.
2 - Reporters put in jail for not revealing sources is not an indication of restricted freedom of the press. This is done when the nature of the reporting clearly demonstrates that a crime has been committed, and rarely, if ever, has anything to do with the report itself. Witness Bill Gertz here in D.C. He frequently publishes word-for-word excerpts from highly classified documents, to the unending frustration of military/intelligence types. Bill is still writing whatever he pleases.
3 - Reporters getting arrested for being in off-limits areas is not an indication of restricted freedom of the press. Contrary to what they may believe, reporters do not have a constitutional right to go wherever they please or do whatever they please to get a story, any more than I have a right to wander into the White House to exercise my constitutional right to speak freely.
4 - Reporters being criticized for speaking against the administration or government is not an example of restricted freedom of the press. The constitution grants the right to print whatever you please, but does not grant you the right to do so without counter or criticism.
5- The government withholding information from the press is not an indication of restricted freedom. The people in those government positions also have a job to do, and they take it every bit as seriously as those all-holy reporters. Sometimes the best (or only) way to be successful in that job is to keep secrets. (side note -- interesting how the press is so willing to publish information that the military/intelligence community says compromises valuable sources, yet they proudly withstand contempt charges to protect their OWN sources.)
It sounds to me like all the pissing and moaning here would more properly be directed at U.S. society in general (and I disagree with these specific complaints, but you are certainly free to make them.) Your freedom to speak and print what you please is a very specific and simple freedom. It does not include the right to break other laws or hinder the legal process, and certainly doesn't guarantee immunity from angry responses from your fellow citizens.
I invite any examples of REAL restrictions on freedom of the press in the U.S. I know there are some (trial gag orders come to mind.) If we can find two or three, we may have something to discuss.
Evil is the money of root.
I agree with your skepticism: that people frequently choose to eat fast food and that such restaurants outnumber those of higher class does not mean that my right to eat at or open a gourmet restaurant has been eroded; it just means that my fellow citizens have bad taste and I am a suffering snob. As a libertarian, I define freedom to be freedom from coercion, and coercion I define very narrowly.
However, two of your points were areas of real coercion.
"2 - Reporters put in jail for not revealing sources..."
We already extend client confidentiality protection to doctors and lawyers, so a precedent exists. Rush Limbaugh today suggested that the press could probably get ahold of this sniper character and interview him, at least with more competence than the FBI. If they would they then have to reveal everything they knew, how would the guy trust them in the first place? If you don't like that example, what about the more important case where the press is criticizing the government? The press is a major democratic institution that is supposed to be one of the checks on government overstepping its bounds. Whistleblowers and other sources should be protected.
"5- The government withholding information from the press is not an indication of restricted freedom."
As I said above, the press is a key part of our system of maintaining government accountability; exciting scandals like Watergate are obvious example, but in general they keep our government officials honest. Unfortunately, they are also dependent on the government for the news, so the government officials have some leverage over them, and they end up in a symbiotic relationship.
Where is the coercion, you ask? One could argue that this is not a problem of freedom of the press, but rather excess power in the government. Coercion is inherent in all things governmental, because that is its definition: it is that agency authorized to initiate force. Furthermore it raises its revenues (taxes) by force, unlike any business, and can eliminate its competition by force. Its operations must therefore be kept maximally transparent.
Uh, yes. That is precisely what freedom of the press is. If you don't like it, start your own newspaper. Rights exist because of ownership. If you own a printing press, then you may use it however you like, so long as you're not violating the rights of other, e.g. by libel.
You are conflating private freedoms with abusive monopolies and anti-trust law, which is a whole different ball o'wax altogether.
Recently we've seen several gag orders from the courts and a recent study shows the courts in general have a very dim view of journalistic freedom.
Given that, either