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."

Comments

Re:Canada is 5th?

[Screaming Lunatic]

It's also surprising, since almost all of the major Canadian newspapers are owned by two people.

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?

Heh, nice censorship

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

Reporters without Borders is censored at my work. Nice irony. =)

Re:Misleading.

[issachar]

the irony is of course that Germany is busy to trying to stomp on the Scientologists as much as they can. Not that I'm against that, I think that the fact that Scientology claims to be a religion and hides behind freedom of religion is a bloody embarassment. For those of you who don't already know, (have you been living in a cave), the truth about Scientology is at Operation Clambake.

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. ;) .

News Reporting Must not Spook Advertisers

[lenshead]

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.

Re:one ot the reasons for this...

[Bert Peers]

Well, here is a simple example of a reporter that is being prosecuted for crossing into secure areas. A few years ago a TV crew wanted to make a point about the extremely bad security at the Belgian national airport. They simply took their camera, started filming and showed how they walked pretty much unharassed from the parking lot up to the nearest plane that was being refueled. If they were carrying a bomb instead of a camera, there might be a problem. If the officials' response is to heavily smack down on the journalists so that nobody would ever dare embarras them again like that, rather than fixing the problem, then the country is clearly worse off.

Now, I'm not saying that violating security regulations should be a routine matter for journalists, but you seem to imply that there can never be a valid reason for journalists to do so. The above is just one recent example.

Why are all the US people so upset?

[IdleTime]

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!