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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."
How long until Ashcroft DMCAs this story?
-Waldo Jaquith
... that an article about lack of freedom of the press in the US, is published in germany?
... that the US doesn't have the best health system in the world, that the US doesn't have the best pension system in the world, and, globally, that the US are not the best place to live in the world.
Of course, there are place far worse than the US. It just isn't the best, it seems.
Funny, I could swear the only reason we're so low on the list, is we have no real good 'news' to report, other than what happens in the US...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Anyone has a link to the complete ranking? Who's number one? Who's last? Actually I have a pretty good idea which countries would be located towards the bottom of that list...
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=4116
Wasn't Norway banning Herman Miller books and jailing booksellers a few years back?
Oh, you meant freedom for what the reporters could say.
You've come along way baby...
"For the average American freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more."
- Gore Vidal
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
In all honesty, I think this is due to
[censored]
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Oh, yeah, nevermind.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
From the article 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.
I'm sorry but if you cross police lines and pose a security risk you most definitely should go to jail. I don't think it unreasonable. As for imprisoning reporters who don't reveal their sources I can see both sides of the issue, but obstructing justice should have a penalty.
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.
Here is their idea of freedom of the press:
A: We have the freedom to print malicous and many times false and misleading articles on both public and private citizens
B: We have the right to interfere with police investigations putting people lives at risk. Including invalidating/contaminating evidence.
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.
D: We have the right to put forth our own political agendas and parade our biases as Journalism.
E: We have the right to, without jury or due process, label someone guilty by inference.
I question "The Journalist" these days. Especially after the military plane in Maryland fiasco. Lets not even start with CNN and the Gulf War. Or How about our plans for our recent IRAQ plans, that was nice.
There is a fine line between the right to privacy and the rights of "journalists".
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
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.
Wow, so the US arrests journalists who, y'know, break the law? Astounding.
I understand the bit about protecting sources. I even agree with the reporters (in most cases). But jumping security at federal buildings? That's just dumb.
To even out things a bit, please mod down any posts originating from Finland, Iceland, Norway or the Netherlands. Thanks.
--- What?
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If US was somehow ranked number 1 in the list, would that motivate the media at ALL to represent stories in a fair and unbiased perspective? Or would they continue on with their trend of digging up dirt on anyone and everyone in the public eye, all in the name of increasing ratings?
But instead of course, they'd dig up dirt on more secretive events.
It'd be like complaining about a carton of sour milk when one has a lactose intolerance..
Finland has the most press freedom in the world. Did you know that Finland is also the country with the least corruption? in the world?
Oh the mighty hordes
Trample a server so small
Please post a mirror
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Fde.news.yahoo.com%2F021023%2F286%2F4ewv.html&la ngpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flan guage_tools
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all....
--Thomas J. Kopp
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. =)
Again, Canada Outranks our neighbours.
in honour of that, Ill tell a little joke:
God, speaking to one of his underlings after the creation of the earth is pointing at some of its wonders. God says, "oh, and this is Canada, it will have a democratic and peacefull native people, it will have unequalled natural beauty, Mountains, seashore, Wild places like nowhere else... later, a great nation will be formed there. One of peace, tolerance, dialogue and understanding. They will not make wars with their enemies, they will appeal to man's good nature. They will care and respect one another. These Canadians will have the respect of other great peoples, but be humble and honest -- respectfull and mindfull of the virtue of others.
to which, God's pion replies "Well, I wonder God, Is it wise bestowing all these great gifts on a single place -- on a single people?"
God replies "well, its not as simple as it looks, wait until the you see the Assholes I put next to them.
Badda-Bing, Ill be hear all week, tip your waitress.. try the Lasagna.
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.
Look at the First place: Finland,Iceland, Norway, Netherlands
:-) On the other hand, China and North Korea have really been in the news lately, and yet they have the least press freedom within recently.
Seems like the countries with the most "free" press are the countries without too much news to report in the first place. Since when did those countries have any interesting news event take place there?
I guess if you don't have any news to report, not really a problem having a "free" press.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
1. There are more than 200 nations in the world.
/. think.
2. We're 7th? whoopee
3. we actually have things to report.
when was the last time anyone gave much of a hoot about the news from finland?
ok before you assume I'm trolling lets stop and think about it. come on
the US is a controversial country. finlan, i think, is not. the US gov perpetrated the Pentagon Papers the Washington Post reported it.
point? we have more thats not worth reporting but more sensitive to reporting.. do you get what I'm saying? I'm pretty sure that if the government of Finland was involved in as many sticky wickets as the US they would be a bit quick with the red pen too.
ok. flame as you please. I'm used to it.
-
.. and they're oh-so objective they are when it comes to America.
"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"
I've always wondered why the fuck a little piece of index card with the word "PRESS" stuck into the band of your fedora should entitle you to go anywhere, and do anything.
Anyways, realize that these countries are just listed in arbitrarily.
I mean, in Canada they don't allow camera's into the courtroom. Nor does it allow reporting on the action of what the government deems "hate groups". Hear no evil, see no evil. But that didn't seem to hurt their rating.
Frankly, given the number of countries in the world, 17 isn't all that "poor", even by these guy's "pull it outta our ass" standards.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Obviously the Enquirer did not make the list or the US would be No. 1. The Enquirer freely prints anything about anybody with wild abandon, anything is fair game - no censorship here, no sirree bob.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
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.
(Score:-2, Censored)
Wow, finally somebody whose not afraid to go and shoot government officials.
I'm pretty sure your gun only contributes to crime as the statistics prove. The only people that are afraid of gun-toting americans are the ones that want real change and go against the status quo. Kennedy, John Lennon, Larry Flynt.
Go fight a tax hike with some guns, terrorist.
Ace
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.
The server is awfully slow, especially with the big graphic on it. Here's the almost-full article:
---
The index
Rank Country Note
1 Finland 0,50
- Iceland 0,50
- Norway 0,50
- Netherlands 0,50
5 Canada 0,75
6 Ireland 1,00
7 Germany 1,50
- Portugal 1,50
- Sweden 1,50
10 Denmark 3,00
11 France 3,25
12 Australia 3,50
- Belgium 3,50
14 Slovenia 4,00
15 Costa Rica 4,25
- Switzerland 4,25
17 United States 4,75
18 Hong Kong 4,83
19 Greece 5,00
20 Ecuador 5,50
21 Benin 6,00
- United Kingdom 6,00
- Uruguay 6,00
24 Chili 6,50
- Hungary 6,50
26 South Africa 7,50
- Austria 7,50
- Japan 7,50
29 Spain 7,75
---truncated due to lameness filter---
130 Irak 79,00
131 Viet Nam 81,25
132 Eritrea 83,67
133 Laos 89,00
134 Cuba 90,25
135 Bhutan 90,75
136 Turkmenistan 91,50
137 Burma 96,83
138 China 97,00
139 North Korea 97,50
--
Reporters Without Borders is publishing the first worldwide press freedom index
The first worldwide index of press freedom has some surprises for Western democracies. The United States ranks below Costa Rica and Italy scores lower than Benin. The five countries with least press freedom are North Korea, China, Burma, Turkmenistan and Bhutan.
Surprises among Western democracies : US below Costa Rica and Italy below Benin
Reporters Without Borders is publishing for the first time a worldwide index of countries according to their respect for press freedom. It also shows that such freedom is under threat everywhere, with the 20 bottom-ranked countries drawn from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The situation in especially bad in Asia, which contains the four worst offenders - North Korea, China, Burma, Turkmenistan and Bhutan.
The top end of the list shows that rich countries have no monopoly of press freedom. Costa and Benin are examples of how growth of a free press does not just depend on a country's material prosperity.
The index was drawn up by asking journalists, researchers and legal experts to answer 50 questions about the whole range of press freedom violations (such as murders or arrests of journalists, censorship, pressure, state monopolies in various fields, punishment of press law offences and regulation of the media). The final list includes 139 countries. The others were not included in the absence of reliable information.
In the worst-ranked countries, press freedom is a dead letter and independent newspapers do not exist. The only voice heard is of media tightly controlled or monitored by the government. The very few independent journalists are constantly harassed, imprisoned or forced into exile by the authorities. The foreign media is banned or allowed in very small doses, always closely monitored.
Right at the top of the list four countries share first place - Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands. These northern European states scrupulously respect press freedom in their own countries but also speak up for it elsewhere, for example recently in Eritrea and Zimbabwe. The highest-scoring country outside Europe is Canada, which comes fifth.
Some countries with democratically-elected governments are way down in the index - such as Colombia (114th) and Bangladesh (118th). In these countries, armed rebel movements, militias or political parties constantly endanger the lives of journalists. The state fails to do all it could to protect them and fight the immunity very often enjoyed by those responsible for such violence.
Costa Rica better placed than the United States
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.
The highest-ranked country of the South is Costa Rica, in 15th position. This Central American nation is traditionally the continent's best performer in terms of press freedom. In February 2002, it ceased to be one of the 17 Latin American states that still give prison sentences to those found guilty of "insulting" public officials. The murder in July 2001 year of journalist Parmenio Medina was an exception in the history of the Costa Rican media.
Cuba, the last dictatorship in Latin America, came 134th and is the only country in the region where there is no diversity of news and journalists are routinely imprisoned. In Haiti (106th), journalists are targeted by informal militias whose actions are covered by the government.
Italy gets bad marks in Europe
The 15 member-countries of the European Union (EU) all score well except for Italy (40th), where news diversity is under serious threat. Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is turning up the pressure on the state-owned television stations, has named his henchmen to help run them and continues to combine his job as head of government with being boss of a privately-owned media group. The imprisonment of journalist Stefano Surace, convicted of press offences from 30 years ago, as well as the monitoring of journalists, searches, unjustified legal summonses and confiscation of equipment, are all responsible for the country's low ranking.
France, in 11th place overall, comes only 8th among EU countries because of several disturbing measures endangering the protection of journalists' sources and because of police interrogation of a number of journalists in recent months.
Among those states hoping to join the EU, Turkey (99th) is very poorly placed. Despite the reform efforts of its government, aimed at easing entry into the EU, many journalists are still being given prison sentences and the media is regularly censored. Press freedom is especially under siege in the southeastern part of the country.
Elsewhere in Europe, such as Belarus (124th), Russia (121st) and the former Soviet republics, it is still difficult to work as a journalist and several have been murdered or imprisoned. Grigory Pasko, jailed since December 2001 in the Vladivostok region of Russia, was given a four-year sentence for publishing pictures of the Russian Navy pouring liquid radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan.
The Middle East and Israel's ambivalent position
No Arab country is among the top 50. Lebanon only makes 56th place and the press freedom situation in the region is not encouraging. In Iraq (130th) and Syria (126th), the state uses every means to control the media and stifle any dissenting voice. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein especially has set his country's media the sole task of relaying his regime's propaganda. In Libya (129th) and Tunisia (128th), no criticism of Col Muammar Kadhafi or President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali is tolerated.
The political weakening of the Palestinian Authority (82nd) means it has made few assaults on press freedom. However, Islamic fundamentalist opposition media have been closed, several attempts made to intimidate and attack local and foreign journalists and many subjects remain taboo. The aim is to convey a united image of the Palestinian people and to conceal aspects such a demonstrations of support for attacks on Israel.
The attitude of Israel (92nd) towards press freedom is ambivalent. Despite strong pressure on state-owned TV and radio, the government respects the local media's freedom of expression. However, in the West Bank and Gaza, Reporters Without Borders has recorded a large number of violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which guarantees press freedom and which Israel has signed. Since the start of the Israeli army's incursions into Palestinian towns and cities in March 2002, very many journalists have been roughed up, threatened, arrested, banned from moving around, targeted by gunfire, wounded or injured, had their press cards withdrawn or been deported.
Good and bad examples in Africa
Eritrea (132nd) and Zimbabwe (122nd) are the most repressive countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The entire privately-owned press in Eritrea was banned by the government in September 2001 and 18 journalists are currently imprisoned there. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is notable for his especially harsh attitude to the foreign and opposition media.
At the other end of the spectrum, Benin is in 21st place despite being classified by the UN Development Programme as one of the world 15 poorest countries. Other African states, such as South Africa (26th), Mali (43rd), Namibia (31st) and Senegal (47th), have genuine press freedom too.
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
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.
....."last month a worldwide survey was conducted by the united nations.the only question asked was 'would you please give your honest opinion about food shortage in the rest of the world?'.....the survey was a huge failure - in africa they didnt know what food meant. in eastern europe they didnt know what honest meant. in western europe they didnt know what shortage meant. in china they didnt know what opinion meant...........in the middle east they didnt know wht solution meant.....in south america they didnt know what please meant.....and in america,they didnt know what the rest of the world meant........"
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
"if you cross police lines..."
It depends on *where* the lines are. And *who* gets to decide what constitutes a risk.
The cockpit doors were wide open and the airlines and FAA were too damned stupid to realize that it was a security hole. So now that the cow is out of the barn, we should put armed guards around the chicken coop?
It's also at At the BBC BBC
(Where it's not slashdotted)
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
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.
When a society is not armed, the government can take every freedom and the people won't be able to do anything.
Gotta be a troll, but just in case you're serious...
I note that one of the most heavily armed countries in the world was Afghanistan, thanks chiefly to the US funding of Islamist and terrorist organizations there right through the 1980s. Basically, anyone with a penis was given free access to an array of weaponry from personal firearms to SAMs. And what happened? The central government collapsed and the country became a war-torn anarchy where the will of the strongest (eventually the Taliban) prevailed.
I don't think that the religious fundamentalists in the US will ever be able to destroy the federal authority, but I note with interest a significant overlap between religious fundamentalism and pro-gun...
Da Blog
The Freedom of Press I will ever need. If I didn't would I be able to say this:
*** !
Tell me any other country where I could say that sentence. Thank to slashdot's lameness filter I can't even censor myself
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.
Um, and he was here, right?
What, do I really need to spell it out for you?
I once endured a "Contemporary American Society" class taught by an Iranian immigrant, about how awful the U.S. was. I notice he was here too ...
I'm intrigued by your statement. The article clearly lists the criteria that causes the US to do poorly. Countries 1 through 16 are ranked higher because they are not doing these things, and presumably because they are also doing everything that the US is doing right.
Is there some other factor you believe the poll missed, that would have placed the US closer to the top? If not, what's your point?
I'd rather be parsing. --Jive5
Bah, who cares? The report's authored by the French! Those cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys put an author on trial recently for stating in public that he thought Islam was the "stupidest religion" or somesuch, so I'm hesitant to even begin feeling chastised.
Stupid Frogs.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
"This recognition is a great honor," Prime Minister Jean Chrtien said in a statement, "but in truth it only confirms what we, as Canadians have always known: That never, in the entire history of our country, have we ever done anything that has caused other nations to pay undue notice or attention.
"Today, the world has finally recognized that Canada is the nation, above all others, that incites little or no reaction from the rest of the world whatsoever. Today, Canadians everywhere can take pride in their timid, mousy anonymity, assured that their presence on the world political stage bothers nobody."
Breakfast served all day!
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intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Babelfished and then cleaned up that last post: (but I don't speak German)
The United States stood at 17 in a world-wide index of the journalist organization "reporter without borders" [press release]. "serious restrictions on the freedom of the press" were registered however on each continent, communicated the [rights organization] on Wednesday in Berlin. Among the 20 countries with the "roughest offences" were European countries former Soviet republics, African, asiatic and Latin American states. Italy was the worst European candidate with a rank 40. Germany fared quite well in the rankings. European Union hopeful Turkey placed 99'th.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Considering that Canada ranked 5th and the U.S ranked 17th. I've always been under the impression Canada is more restrictive than the U.S. on those points - especially B, C, and E.
I'm sure there are other examples.
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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When Lebanon, a country with state controlled press, where a French reporter was nearly lynched at a conference in Beruit for the "crime" of having covered stories about Israel link(while in France) ranks in the 50's, the Palestinian Authority (where reporters are granted access based on their support of the "Palestinian narrative" and threatened with injury and death if they don't) can "score" better than Israel, a democracy.
Sometimes the self-proclaimed allies of freedom can be be freedom's worst enemies.
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.
Oh well...I guess all is well.
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
Excuse me? Aside from your hopeful presumtion that all, or even most, journalists arrested in that way were promptly released, your argument is wrong-headed. It would be fine if they arrested one journalist for not reavealing his sources, acquited him of it, and then stopped because of the legal precedent set. It is most certainly not fine to essentailly harass reporters for doing their job.
On your second point, I am more inclined to agree, but remember to ask yourself: why wern't the reporters given access to 'offical buildings' in the first place? Remember the pentagon papers: sometimes (often, if you ask me) the public right to know outweighs the state's right to secracy.
Hmm, I thought people who shout things like "Heil Hitler" are giving Nazi salutes. I thought people who gave "Roman salutes" tended to shout things like "ave, Caesar, morituri te salutamus" ('hail, Caesar, we who are about to die salute you').
The Germans have annexed France again! Send the boys back in!
Yes, the press is free to do all these things ... but that doesn't mean they should. I think what you're complaining about is Press Responsibility. This is part of a much larger problem in the US: Everyone thinks they know what their rights are, especially when they feel these rights are infringed upon. However, nobody wants to own up to the responsibilities that come with these rights. People, organizations and corporations should consider the responsibilities of good citizenship as well as what they perceive to be their rights.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
At least one local paper in virtually every major city, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Halifax, is owned by the CanWest Global. The same organization owns the National Post, one of the two national papers, and Global TV, one of three national broadcasters. CanWest Global is owned by Izzy Asper, who is an open supporter of the ruling Liberal party and is chummy with the Prime Minister. (In most cities, the only other paper is owned by the Sun group, which publishes tabloid-quality news at best.)
CanWest Global has ordered every member paper to run unsigned national editorial, and not to publish local editorials that contradict the national line. Within the past few months, Russell Mills, the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, was fired by the parent company for publishing an article suggesting that the Prime Minister had been involved in a conflict of interest.
Fifth place, my ass.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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.
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
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Yuckkk!!!
"Piter, too, is dead."
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.
Seems kind of puzzling considering the recent cases in past years involving Amazon.com being sued for selling a book(Mein Kampf).
:-)
Then there's that whole Germany/Scientology connection thing.
Looks to me like this ranking is particularly skewed... as long as you define freedom as publishing the official government sanctioned news, then Pravda should be #1.
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.
Oddly enough, he won't actually limit your right to own sniper rifles. Welcome to Bush's America, where the only Amendment that counts is the 2nd.
So what exactly makes our Freedom of the Press that limited?
My suspicion is not so much that press is limited, or that information is censured, but rather the bias in the distribution.
Take books; these are fairly conservative in nature. Liberal view points don't sell as many books as conservative view points do. Take telvision and radio; these are fairly liberal in nature. Conservative view points aren't expressed as readily as liberal view points are.
The problem stems from the fact that each group views itself as the normal. That is, liberals don't think they're THAT liberal. Conservatives don't think they're THAT conservative. So, to be "fair", they extend a little to the left, and a little to the right when reporting.
On a normalized scale, this means we really _are_ getting biased data. For instance, when a Republican is in office, we have a homeless problem. When a Democrat is in office, we don't have a homeless problem. Given the number of homeless stays the same, what's changed -- that's right, what gets reported. Suitable examples exist for the other direction.
So, my bet is that it's the selection of the news that gets printed, rather than the prevention of printing news.
Here's the Yahoo article after the Fish did it's work and I use my limited German skills to clean it up:
Wednesday 23 October 2002, 18:59 o'clock
The USA on the Index For Press Freedom ranks only at 17th place(AFP). The United States stand at 17th place on a world-wide index by the journalist organization "Reporter Without Borders" for the attention of the press freedom only. "Serious restrictions of the press" were registered however on each continent, communicated the protection of interests on Wednesday in Berlin. Under the 20 countries that have the "worst offences" also include the European countries Russia and White Russia are beside African, Asiatic and Latin American states. As a worst European country candidate on the list is Italy and landed at the rank of 40. Germany fares with severe rank quite well. [European Union Beitrittsaspirant] Turkey occupies according to the data in the 99th Place.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
PIRA has not killed any journalists in a long time, in fact I cannot remember when they ever did.
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.
America needs to learn that Freedom of the Press requires Responsibility of the Press.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
That's not actually Canada, per se, it's a couple of twits at the border who turn back stuff when they feel like it. The Border Guards have a fair degree of latitude, much the same as U.S. Border Guards do.
:)
There was a fuss about some Gay Lit. (or porn, depending on your point of view) that got refused at the border, and the whole thing went to the Supreme Court. The situation is a little better now; you can import most things into Canada, you just have to pay the GST
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
People in France can be charged with a hate crime for calling Islam "dumb"
No one said that the journalists were trespassing into high-security areas, the report says that they "crossed security lines at some official buildings".
I don't really feel like anyone who hasn't experienced or seen this phenomenon first-hand is going to have a real sense of what a "security line" entails, or how arbitrary they can be. Three weeks ago when I was in Washington DC, I watched about ten journalists get arrested for being on the wrong side of a police line - including Colin Powell's personal photographer. At this event (a political protest that the journalists were covering) the police made well over 500 illegal arrests, and ALL of which that have come to trial so far have been thrown out. I myself was arrested for providing medical care to protestors, while breaking no laws - my charge, and the charge of the reporters, "failure to obey an order to disperse", is one that dozens of arrestees have gotten thrown out on the premise that no such order was ever given - which the Metro PD doesn't deny at trial.
Were journalists intentionally targetted as journalists? Probably not. However, the arbitrary use of arrest as a tool to silence freedom of expression affected their ability to get an article to press - just ask the Washington Post reporter, the UMaryland journalists, or any of the other members of the press who spent the night in jail in the name of a "security line". No wonder the U.S. ranks 17th in this study.
I have a feeling it may be that the rest of the world largely looks at your mainstream "news" such as CNN, Fox, CBS etc, as edutainment instead of reporting. I'd say about 99% of the folks I know here in Canada do, at the very least. And when all your major information channels (TV, newspapers, radio, now internet) have been crapflooded with corporate "news lite," and when all your *real* reporters can't find work anywhere, unless they sell out, your country as a whole loses out.
*I* don't see any real mainstream freedom of the press down south (and don't forget, mainstream is the only thing that really counts). And it's only getting more and more scarce up here.
Don't put salt in your eyes.
Arrest shouldn't be construed or used (it is) as a penalty.
It is merely a tool to hold a person suspected of a crime, that is all it should be.
If for ANY reason you are in an area you generally shouldn't be, getting arrested until a court can determine if a crime was in fact committed is fair. Making statements that cause damage without any evidence to support them is wrong, and you should be punished for this.
Being a journalist doesn't change this, however it may give weight to your defence.
Canada ranked 15th, not 5th, according to the numbers on the map IIRC...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Why? perhaps because the majority of people who aspire to be journalists are not trying to report the news in a fair manner. They are trying to get themselves on TV, plain and simple. Case in point, observe all the cupie-dolls and bo-hunks on your local TV news, or national, for that matter. Ashleigh Banfield couldnt find a clue if her life depended on it. Or look at how many print reporters write articles that seem remarkably like trolling for hits. They are trying to make a name for themselves, which leads to our/my zero respect for journalists. I'm not saying EVERY journalists is like this, but I think you get my drift.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
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!
The Second Amendment is the one that guarantees the other nine in the Bill of Rights. Look at countries such as China or Iraq as examples of what happens when the people's right to bear arms is violatedby the government. Hell, it was Mao who said that "power flows from the barrel of a gun"...like other mass murderers before him, he knew the dangers ordinary people with guns would pose to his regime. Only tyrants and criminals fear an armed citizenry.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
was a spot of something on my monitor...canada was 5th.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If you did something illegal you may have to face the consequences.
Being a member of the press does not allow nor should it permit you to violate laws that apply to all other people.
If you are assuming that they lean left because they are European - an exceptionally questionable logical leap I see many Americans making - how do you account for the fact that Cuba appears on the list far, far below most every other Latin American country?
And what ideological bias can we presume from a site hosted in the US?
Your objection have been answered elsewhere - specifically that the "crossing security lines" charge is a great way from paralyzing any investigation of any governmental activity, and that the right of a journalist to protect their source is an essential tenet in the freedom of the press. ("our legal system is still working" indeed, what a crock.)
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...
For one thing, you listing FOX as one of the non-conspiracy-rag news agencies scares me ;-)
On another topic, you bring up an interesting point on how it's not our gov't that censors the media, but the media itself. There's also a post below that talks about how Canada's papers are owned my two men who can say what is and isn't printed (that sounds quite unreal to me... is that true?).
But even if this is the case, it's important to remember that this has nothing to do with "freedom of the press". Say there is only one agent of the press in this nation. That reporter would write the only news any of us read, and in all likelihood it would be a pretty biased account of what was going on. But is that reporter free to report on whatever he/she likes?
As long as it's the case that a reporter can investigate whatever whim comes to him/her, that reporter is free and freedom of the press is maintained.
If there is only one story or one point of view covered by the press (due to bias, competition, compensation, &c.), but officers of the press are in theory free to investigate whatever stories they like, the fault is not in a nation's freedom of press, but with the nation's lack of diversity in reputable news sources.
Is the US guilty of this? Yes, I think it is -- mostly for the reasons you list above. And really, when it comes down to it, this is the type of thing that the US is notorious for. We have freedom of speech, but we get Howard Stern. We have freedom of press, but we get the Enquirer.
Still, I'd much rather be accused of not fulfilling the potential of a principal than be accused of not defending the rights that principal grants.
--
sorry, could you point me to the "responsibilities" section of the US Constitution?
funny, i thought that they were inalienable rights.
... hi bingo
Well, that depends on whether you consider Mein Kampf to be journalism or some other work. The report isn't about freedom of expression, as I pointed out, it's about the freedoms of journalists, an altogether different subject. That's the point of the post, is that I saw a lot of "they don't have the same liberties as we do, how can they be higher," and it's not the point of the report.
as a left-wing nut -
i agree. 2nd amendment is the LAST defense, and used only in case the 1st amendment falls.
... hi bingo
As far as "crossing police lines" goes, there was a perfect example during some recent protests in DC.
The licensed protestors (I have a problem with freedom to demonstrate licenses, but they were licensed) were told to disperse. Then all avenues to disperse were blocked and they were all hurded into a park and arrested. Including campus reporters. To cap off the deal, if they waived court and pleaded immediately they could go free. If they wished to discuss it with a lawyer or contest the arrest, they were heald until monday (after the demonstrations would be over). Campus reporters, dorm residents (one hurding area was right in front of a lawschool dorm), pretty much everybody except for "commercial news" reporters.
Oh, btw, this was not some "Evil Right Wing Bush Thing", it was the LEFT WING D.C. government in all of it's glory.
There was an interesting writeup about the situation by a Washington Post cloumnist (too lazy to look it up).
Anyway, this was so recent that it may have not made this study, but it was still wrong to do just the same.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
yeh, who the hell could stand up to those red-coats anyway!
or how could a ragtag group of frenchies stand up to their imperial govt...
so outgunned, out classed.
or how could a backwards jungle country make a superpower run away with its tail between its legs?
or a remote asian country make another superpower run with ITS tail between its legs.
yeh, i totally understand your point - david has never beat goliath.
... hi bingo
I think this is a very disturbing thought. I'm not a tyrant and I'm not a criminal, and yet I'm very afraid of armed citizenry. In a lot of Ocidental countries it is much easier to get a gun than to get some shooting courses. I'm forced to think it's very likely a lot of people get guns without knowing how to use them. And a lot of us know how dangerous guns can be in the hands of unaware people, especially when they decide to use their guns.
My neighbor's
Jeez!.... how about you actually go visit some of these places before posting uniformed BS about them. What makes you think the press are any less free in western europe than here... heck many of the media companies are the same ... CNN operates out of most european countries as well as the USA for example.
Sure, it's a "government for the people", but that doesn't mean the people can go anywhere they want. The government has secrets -- not because it doesn't want the people to know, but because they don't want their enemies to know. Why should they not be allowed to protect them?
The headline is certainly an attention getter but it is probably a good idea to delve a little deeper into the substance of the article. A slightly more expanded article (also in german) provides some needed details.
The data for the report was provided by a worldwide group of journalists, researchers and legal experts.
1. The reasoning for the relatively poor showing of the United States is attributed to increased control/restriction of information availble to journalists since the 9-11 attacks.
2. Also notable is that Costa Rica placed 15th.
3. Austria, South Africa and Japan are tied in 26th place.
4. Italy ranks 40th.
(my opinion now) My beef with this report is that it does not give us any substantive information as to EXACTLY which criteria were applied to generate the rankings list. I lived overseas for 8.5 years (in europe) and noticed a strong tendancy to portray one's own country as better than the others... Sort of the same behaviour Americans tend to exhibit towards the rest of the world.
Freedom as applied to the press or as applied to individuals is a very subjective thing indeed. It is nearly impossible to objectively quantify things that are largely subjective in nature.
this survey is meaningless.
the amount of freedom a press has is proportional to the amount of information they have to dig up.
how much info do you have to dig up in costa rica?
rumsfeld censors his briefings to the press cause we're at war. is costa rica at war?
by the way how many countries prime ministers or secretaries have daily briefings with the press?
and finally, again who cares? it all comes out in the end. what we don't know now we will know in about 30-40 years anyway and we'll be flummoxed as to why we thought we needed to know so much in the first place.
case in point. the cuban missle crisis. recently tons of info has been declassified regarding those 13 days. how many of you cared? if the info is irrelevant now it was just as irrelevant then.
-
The article points out two specific reasons for the US Rank of 17.
First, the US imprisons reporters who do not reveal sources in court when subpoenaed. But nowhere in the Constitution are journalists given some sort of doctor-patient or lawyer-client confidentiality. Indeed, this is not a restriction of the press. They can still write what they want - they may simply have to spill their source if relevant to a crime. One can argue that this may hurt their livelihood if future sources elect not to talk to them for fear of being turned over, but this isn't a responsibility of a society.
Second, they argue that many security perimeters were established around buildings after September 11, and that reporters were arrested for crossing them. Shocking. You mean that reporters were arrested for blatantly commiting a crime? They should be arrested, just as I would have been. Reporters seem to think that their occupation gives them some license to break laws that apply to the rest of us. It doesn't, and shouldn't.
Ultimately, I don't think we necessarily have the most free press. There are a lot of secrets, but military and intelligence secrets should be just that. A lot of institutions blatantly violate the FOIA. But the arguments put forth by the organization that made the report are not in the least compelling.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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"
I need to find an elderly blind gentleman with a lot of money lying around to let his "son" borrow from him. Then I can own AOL/Time Warner and oppress the lot of you all!
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
I did a cleanup of the babelfish translation (as good as I could with my near non-existant knowledge of german). If you're viewing the full set of replies, you can try following this link. It should be faster (jumps to an anchor in the current page).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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.
It's not quite as bad as that, but I think there's probably a bit more of French anti-Americanism here than objectivity. Does anyone think the US is just a "satisfactory" place for journalists as opposed to a "good" place? That's what the report says!
would that be backwards jungle countries backed by the other superpower? and the remote asian country backed by another superpower?
I was listening to NPR on my way home and heard about this book:
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
To quote the Amazon review: "To the uninitiated reader, the accounts of what goes on behind the scenes at major news organizations are shocking. Executives regularly squelch legitimate stories that will lower their ratings, upset their advertisers or miff their investors. Unfortunately, this dirt is unlikely to reach unknowing news audiences, as this volume's likely readership is already familiar with the current state of journalism."
Power of the free market, eh?
A speech...
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!
Well things are not bright in Russia. But putting Russia worser than certain neighbors is too much. I have been in some of these places and I sincerly consider that the report is too biased. They forget that some countries with "freedom" higher than Russia journalists are killed or have a puppet press that serves the wishes of local authorities. Besides, Gregory Pasko's case is quite scandalous. Yes, he was a journalist. But he was also an officer and he was sentenced for sharing too much military information with a foreign organisation. Besides these guys forget that most charges were dropped out and that this case still didn't end completely. Yes, it is a very dirty, but also a complex case. Did Pasko overweighted his duties as an officer while trying to to fulfill a citizen duty? That's what everyone asks about.
Has Russia Freedom of Information? It has - too much and too little at the same time. You can hear a journalist asking very hard questions to the President about the corrupt behaviour of the authorities on Tuva Republic. At the same time you see these same authorities trying to shut ip this dissident voice. On one side you see oligarchs, through their media,crying foul that there is no Freedom of Information. At the same time you see these media brainwashing everyone that they found data against Putin. The local TVs are controlled by local elites, but they are several and in every critical moment you see them fighting against each other and blackmailing the opponent.
Russia's Freedom of Information is a huge mastodon washing machine. It looks much like Alexis de Tocqueville memories on how the US lived in the XIX century.
And one more example on how information goes quite uncontrolled. Many of you may know that right now in Moscow there is a big hostage crisis going on. Well the channels gave people a chance to speak and now it is quite clear that some gave too much information over the screen... And it occurs that terrorists are also watching TV...
Frankly, I don't know what level should be put to
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
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.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Let me get this straight:Your RUSSIAN professor was lecturing AMERICANS about freedom? That's rich.
You need to do some reading
To which REAL freedoms was he referring? The freedom to be arrested in the middle of the night? To be murdered in cold blood for daring to read samizdat or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Maybe you're referring to the freedom to pollute and destroy the environment without regulation, to produce chemical and biological warheads (not just in tests, in missiles) and then allow those materials to proliferate to third-world despots? What about the freedom of the NKVD/KGB to murder anyone at anytime for any reason? In that case, I guess he was right.
America has lots of problems -yes, but the "Blame American first" crowd really makes me sick. America is among the freest countries in the world. Sure, there's a LOT to criticize about it, but don't be ridiculous.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
This here is press-men deciding which places are best for the press to do buisness in. In other words, can you report what you see without going to jail? That's thier bit. Read the bottom. They help reporters in jail.
I imagine it completely neglects many things that we consider *very* important for press freedom. I imagine they close thier eyes to internal buisness politics and the media owners themselves. After all, they are reporters. They think they are the bastion for the free spread of information, yet look at the newspapers! Really look at the fucking newspapers. They parrot Reuters. That's it. The censorship that they do, that they learned to do to rise in thier profession (troublesome reporters who hinder sales *do* *not* *rise*), that thier bosses do, is a giant blind spot. Investigative reporting is dead - and they and thier bosses let it die - and they're running around pretending that the US sticking a couple of people in jail for tresspassing is a serious factor in the fucked up new-speak trash that passes as journalism around the world compared to the fact that Monsano can kill a story with a fucking phone call!
All of the US government repression in the world is a drop in the fucking bucket compared to the simple fact that every time you find a reporter who broke a real story, big news, better than 50 percent of the time he lost his job. Journalists repressed by the government? Fuck that. The press destroyed itself.
If the press were doing investigative journalism, if the journalists had skills at finding the stories (and wern't fired for doing so) - then it would be an uphill battle for the internet to brush aside the newspapers as a media source. Since journalism is dead, probably never existed in the way we think of it (hasn't it always been about getting people to buy large square sheets of low quality paper in bulk), and the online sites are just as good at sucking news off Reuters as a newspaper, traditional news media is dying.
Helping reporters get out of jail is a noble cause. Thinking that your narrow focus in this activity makes you some kind of universal expert on press freedom is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard this week. News is killed more often with a pen than a sword - or in this case, a phone call from a billionaire that the boss plays golf with.
Nimwits. This is not news. It's a piece of propaganda to sell thier particular cause.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
We're much freer. Period.
And you don't have to live in EVERY country to know about freedom. We're free. Other countries are not as free as we are. I've never been anywhere freer than the USA. That's my experience, and I have quite a bit.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
"Well, that depends on whether you consider Mein Kampf to be journalism or some other work. "
Actually no it doesn't depend upon that.
"as I pointed out, it's about the freedoms of journalists"
Then it isn't about Freedom of the Press, so the title is incredibly disceiving.
As I said, they don't understand what "Freedom of the Press" means. It doesn't mean Journalism, it means printing PRESS as in printing anything and everything. A listing showing which countries banned printed materials would be far more interesting, and I would be surprised if it did not result in the US being #1.
I call it America-bashing, because the criteria was obviously weighted such that the US would not do well.
BTW, the moderation attempt to censor my opposing opinion pretty much proves my point. How can you be for freedom of the press when opposing positions must be censored?
Look out for those black helicopters!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
...the way they do.
:-) ).
:-)
The Nazi Thing:
In Germany offering 'Mein Kampf', saying 'Heil Hitler!' wearing Nazi Symbols, denying the Holocaust, calling Auschwitz a lie - aka 'the Auschwitz lie' and discriminating etnic groups or religions can get you a serious legal ass-chewing faster than going topless on a south-eastern US beach (SCNR
As an american pupil, I heard scottish pupils call me "Nazikid" just for the fact that I came to Scottland from Germany. Any german pupil in midgrades or higher would risk being chucked out of school almost instantly donig something like that.
Today germans in general show no sense of humor what so ever when dealing with anything that has even the faintest impression of being fashitoid or Nazi-like. That has even trippled since Mölln and Rostock/Lichtenhagen. And comparing someone with anything like that is the severest of possible insults. You may have noticed that Herta Däubler-Gmelin resigned from her position two days after she had mentioned George Bush and 'Adolf Nazi' in the same sentence.
You say one wrong word, or just even make the impression you where going to say it - and there goes your political career.
The CoS Thing:
Aside from the fact that, in germany, all religious and etnic groups are equaly protected under the german constitution, Scientology has officially been disqualified as a religious group and has the official status of a 'revenue orientated society' and has a set of sidenotes stuck on the fact that it poses a threat to democracy and the german constitution. Especially as total world domination (TM) is an official central goal of the CoS (sic!).
And think what you will about the german 'Federal Bureau for Protection of the Constitution' (Bundesverfassungsschutz), it isn't that they officially anounce they're putting an organization under observation every odd month. Like they did with the CoS. Usually only sympathisants of groups that fly planes into skyscrapers get that sort of attention. That's all one needs to know about the CoS to know enough.
And speaking of religious freedom: German Hare-Krishnas have officially applied for room and curriculum-time for religious classes (which are attended voluntarily of course) in Schools throughout Berlin jurisdiction. It was granted. Do you have that kind of freedom in the U.S.?
So, don't jump to conclusions before you know the whole story.
Bottom Line: If you want to know what trouble feels like, go to Berlin, stand at the 'Brandenburger Tor' wearing a CoS T-Shirt and yell 'Heil Hitler!'
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
oh wait -- that's what WE do, complaining that we DO have the rights they tell us we don't have, without actually leaving our own country ... hmmmm ... makes you think? probably not.
I'd bet quite a bit ... that I am more widely travelled than you. Not a boast, just a very good guess. Hey, you brought it up.
I hear that the freedom of the press at the north pole is GREAT!!! There is absolutely NO censorship at all, and people can say whatever they want, without any fear of breaking the law!
THANK GOD!
Someone else knows the true horror that the government have unleashed! The horror that is BATBOY!
The fact that the guy will be imprisoned/killed if he goes back to his country doesn't mean that he has to agree with everything in your society. I think it's fairly natural for a political refugee to be very critical of the society he lives in. After all, he learned the dangers of a badly construed society and is probably very interested in creating a better society (in the US and in Iran). You can't create a better society without analyzing the existing ones and determining their strenghts and weaknesses.
The true hypocrisy is with nationalists who simply assume that their society is the best or "God's own country"(tm) without a true understanding of other societies in this world and their strengths and weaknesses.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
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 ranking uses meaningless metrics so it's results are meaningless. Freedom of the Press permits journalists to print anything they discover. It does not shield reporters who use illegal means to gain such information, if caught engaging in illegal activities a reporter can be justly prosecuted. That is not a violation of freedom of speech. Trying thinking critically, just a little bit. The press, like the branches of government, have limitations (breaking and entering, trespassing, bribery, etc.).
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.
The US press accomplishes this mission. There is no shortage of powerful politicians from all parties and government agents and respresentatives of all administrations who get caught engaging in various forms of corruption and are exposed by the press.
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
I agree. The reason that the US is arguably the most free society in the world is because it's one of the most armed.
For example, Bush would be unable to do to the US what his father did to Latin American, simply because we are as well armed as any terrorist groups he might send out to attack us.
I am anti-conservative and anti-Republican. I fully support the right of people to keep and bear arms. From the looks of the Bush's plans for America, we will probably need them.
There are two types of people; those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.
The government decides to hold a press conference and invites all the friendly press along... this is normal and not called censorship. If any one of those present writes a scathing report of what is said they do not get invited to the next conference. Any paper that is not invited cannot sell papers as they find out what is going on after everyone else and they lose money. It may not be consorship but it is as effective. The only way to combat this and to have true press freedom is to legislate. It would be silly to expect those that gain to introduce the curbs to their own control.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Too bad I used all my mod points today, this post (cascadingstylesheet) is clearly +1 informative, +1 underrated and +1 TRUE
I know several immigrants from russia that came here in the 80s, and they would strongly disagree with the aforementioned russian professor
Very well put. What is worse is that these people brand their opponents as unpatriotic for criticizing the country's policies, when they themselves haven't even bothered to read the Constitution, much less the Federalist Papers, Common Sense, or pretty much anything about American history since their high school history books. Don't call yourself a patriot if you don't even know what the U.S. Constitution says.
With things such as the DMCA and the patriot act, the ability of american citizens to speak freely and henceforth report freely has been limited as well.
A good example where this could be taken to an extreme with the copy protected cd's. Technically if a news source reports that you can defeat the copy protection by using a felt permanent marker to cover the bad part of the disk, their violating the DMCA because their disiminating information used to subvert the copy protection on a piece of media.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Why? Are you worried that your neighbor is going to gun you down? If he's that much of a low-life, you need to consider (a) moving or (b) arming yourself as a defense against him. Don't count on the government to guarantee your safety as they can do fsck-all for you if some punk wishes to do you harm. Call for a cop and call for a pizza; tell us which one arrives first.
The same can be said for cars and driver's-ed courses. Your point is...? (Before you point out that you need a driver's license to operate a car, let me remind you that while the right to keep and bear arms is a natural right that is not subject to government interference or restriction, operating a motor vehicle on the public streets is a privilege. It's also worth noting that in many jurisdictions, you don't need to have taken any driver's-ed courses to get a driver's license.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
He wasn't linking guns to terrorism. He was linking the threatened use of guns against government officials as terrorism. The argument that guns will keep us free might have made sense when the only guns around were muskets, but in the modern era do you really think the federal government is afraid of a few hundred 50+ yr-old rednecks practicing with semiautomatics in the woods?
Are they comparing what is allowed at the government or corporate level? The key is in the US if an event happens, I can report it on without fear of prosecution. That is to say I report the truth. If I twist the truth or flat out lie it can be considered libel.
/. so grain of salt and all.
Now if I work for a major news reporting corporation, and I want to report on an event, but my boss won't allow it, that's not violating freedom of the press. That's just the corporation deciding that they don't to want report an event. But there isn't anything stopping me from reporting it myself to the local paper, on the Internet, by giving out handouts on street corners, etc and no government, local, state or federal can prevent me from disemenating that information.
Then again, this is
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
You think they didn't know? I would rather suspect that they did -- as would anybody who gave a few moments thought to the question -- but the economics and politics of the time prohibited doing much about it.
1- Airlines weren't exactly in great financial shape before then.
2- Security in terms of intrusive searches and El Al-style pre-boarding interviews (the 'correct' way to handle it, probably, from a security POV) takes a huge amount of time, training and money.
3- Adding things like bomb detectors increases time delays due to needing to check out false positives, e.g. nylon stockings giving off nitrogen vapors.
4- The customers were already pissed off in terms of delays, pre-boarding waits, and so forth.
Any airline that would have unilaterally boosted security to the point where it were actually meaningful (e.g. that hasn't been achieved yet...) might have been pushed into bankruptcy by customers fleeing to competitors who could field many more flights per day with far less inconvenience. Were the FAA to have tried, it would have been political suicide for the administration.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
dude - if american stupidity is going to kill itself, we're taking the world down with us.
GOOOOOOO DUBYA!!!
... hi bingo
Someone "doing their job" is never a reason not to arrest or harras them. Obeying the freedom of the press is a valid reason, though. Its kind of a symantic, but not really.
Mod point free since 2001
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.
Do you have any idea how arrogant that sounds?
Is it only your own country which has anything worthwhile in it? This must come as a big surprise to those living in other lands. Even the countries with the largest populations in the world, have less than 20% of the world's population, and I'm making a wild guess that you are not in fact coming from India or China.
This is not the first such comment to be made, but it's the last I can read before commenting in response. There are other people in the world, who may in fact be doing much more interesting and important things than you or your peers are doing. It might even be newsworthy, fancy that!
"I would also like to point out that the US is in the 10th position as the other countries were tied for their spots."
If I come in first, and tie with another person in first, we are both in first. The next person is in third. There is no second place when two people tie for first. This is an accepted standard for ranking things. It happens at the Olympics, it happens in ratings. If you think the US is really in 10th because of ties, you are having a bad case of sour grapes. The only suggestion I can offer is to go get some cheese to go with it.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Bullshit.
Either that, or you're illiterate or deliberately ignorant. US media has pundits as diverse as Fareed Zakaria, William Safire, Thomas Friedman, Bill Clinton (who's been known to pen an op-ed column occasionally), the Aryan Nation freaks (who, in the US, _are_ largely allowed to speak ) and the head of B'nai Brith. Or, for that matter, Meir Kahane (before his assassination).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
If your french isn't that bad, try using babelfish to translate the link to french ( or see if babelfish will then translate it's french translation back to english!) Right click on the link in slashdot and copy the link address then paste that in the bablefish 'translate this URL' box.
"Should you or your co-workers be captured or killed, we will deny all knowledge of you or this communication. Good luck, Jim."
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
No, it just takes a reader who's not willing to seek out disparate sources. The _NYT_, for instance, isn't exactly foaming at the mouth agitating for war.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
In Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner describes a 'fictional' country in West Africa where peace is (genetically) predominant. It was written around 1970 but set around now. I'm just commenting on a coincidence, but... read it if you have the chance, this book and a couple of others he wrote are precursors to 'cyberpunk' SF.
Here's an interesting fact: officials haven't gotten any more bulletproof than they were 226 years ago.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
A couple of weeks ago I read a report on countries' political corruption (as perceived by the respective countries' citizens). It's interesting to note that Iceland and Finland are in the top 5 in the both surveys. The U.S. ranks at #16 in this survey but some large European countries that scored well on press freedom (Germany and France) did not do so well on corruption (7th and 11th (press), 18th and 25th (corruption), respectively). (But I suppose I could be reading a little too far into this!)
The media companies seem to have virtually no self discipline and no system of chacks and balances. Here, the journalists' and the editors union hav agree upon a set of rules, the "be carful poster". This is an actual poster, found in every media desk with some self-imposed rules that we have to follow. Breaches can be brough in before the review board by anyone for free. The review board consits of thre journalists, three editors and thre members of the public. A critisism from the board is very serious for a jounalist, roughly the same as a kick in the nuts. This makes sure the media is always aware of the moral boundries.
Even more dangerous than the seemingly loos morals in the media desks, is the ownership conflict. It seems that USAian media have a hard time being objective when in comes to their own mother companies. Here we have NRK (www.nrk.no), a goverment own system of TV-stations, radiostations and internet sites. They are so aware of their own doing, that they rank as #1 in giving NRK harsh critisism. Only then can they be legitimate in the eyes of the public.
The constitution in Norway grants the press very, very, very wide liberties. There are a few restrictions such as the penal code 135A that prohibits racial and homophobic threats. But this is considered to be libery ensuring not hindering. Why? Because they right to be something is also an expression, as in homosexuality. Any threats to this is considered counter-active to liberty. The same apply to religion. We also have some arcane laws that protects that King, but not from critisism.
So, it may look like there's a clean up waiting in the US.
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?
Perhaps that's why the report specifically singled France out as being poor for Europe. Did you not read that bit?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What DMCA? What censorship?
The real problem is [CENSORED]
Now move along nothing to see here!
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
Further, aside from technicalities, there arn't that many different types of cases. Either the journalist has a source who could give information useful to a trial of a third party, or a journalist is accused of slander. In the former, the only variable is the sevarity of the crime. In the latter, there are no variables - either the journo has to reveal or they don't.
Lastly, if you accept the premise of the original post that all or most journalists arrested for not revealing sources were released soon afterwards, don't you think that in itself is enough precedent to limit such arrests to all but the most abbarent cases?
Well, just remebered the time when journalist hunted and haunted me and my colleagues - the Y2K hype.
From that experience I learn a few things.
Journalists are in its large majority quite biased. They want the news. If they don't get hit, they start flaming.
Journalists frequently cry for freedom. But their freedom is not freedom of expression. For many of them "freedom of press" means "write whatever comes to your head".
Journalists really don't like that someone spoils their "hot news". If you don't wanna say a word they cry "censorship", if you disagree with them, they cry "propaganda". If you send them somewhere else, they cry "attacks on press".
Journalists love to write. Even if they have no material. One colleague was attacked by a series of stupid questions, sounding like Armageddon predictions. He answered "that's hype, nothing else". The journalist managed to produce an half page comment of this phrase in one newspaper telling that experts were blind and could not see what was going on.
Journalists believe they can be experts in everything. When they write about hackers or computers, most texts are more fantastic than most Holywood blockbusters.
Not all journalists are like these ones. But the sensationalist mass is the majority. During Y2K, I saw only one guy who had the head a little bit on his shoulders. Everyone else, some 6-7 idiots, were always trying to get the best prediction for Armageddon.
Ooops except one. The jerk seemed to have get pissed on something and wrote a stupid tale that the city where I live had the honour to have the NNth most dangerous hacker in the world. And told everyone who this "mega-dangerous" hacker was in some popular newspaper.. Till now people ask me about this...
So, people, don't take too close to heart this list... Frankly, I know a little bit about journalistics in some 10-11 countries and I'm terribly admired about their positions in this list.
"So, don't jump to conclusions before you know the whole story."
I don't care what the justification is. You cannot have Freedom of the Press if you outlaw the printed expression of certain viewpoints, no matter how much you disagree with those viewpoints.
That's why I found it quite odd to see Germany and France listed above the US when they do not have Freedom of the Press.
...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)
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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.
...RMS comes out and tell us "see? i told you gpl was good!"
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Actually, according to Chomsky, it's not the media, but advertisers that censor the media. By threatening to pull advertising dollars, they have a huge amount of control over media. Obviously, when it comes to media such as television, they have almost complete control. Also, most of the American press get their news from the arms of Institutions that are set up to feed them with a constant supply of material. So, again, the press is dependant on the government and corporations for quite a bit of official news, and these organizations are obviously quite commited and enthusiastic about making sure the media get the "official" version. When you combine this other effective filters, you get an extremely powerful mechanism that serves a right wing corporate agenda and moneyed interests.
There is a lot of criticizim about the ranking many of them are relevant points. But to talk about the freedom of press in the US. A few months ago it became glaringly obvious to me how narrow minded and conservative the US press really is.
One incident in recent times, There were large protests against Bush's war on terror in San Francisco and New York with 20,000+ protestors each a few weekends ago. There was a 400,000 person protest in england with many many important people speaking thier minds against the war at each of these events. Not one word about this was mentioned in any of the mainstream US media. Tim Robbins (actor) spoke out against the war in the New York protest and he didn't get any coverage. Where as CNN covered Spielberg and Tom Curise who were pro-war.
I it is hilarious when the name of a cat rescued by a firefighter is mentioned on CNN but the name of a person who pulled out three people to safety from a minivan that crashed into the ocean is unmentioned.
Why a a cat rescue is news worthy? Why do events from the rest of the world hardly ever get a mention? It seems as if there is nothing happening in the rest of the world when you live in the US. A major train collison in say China/ India is less newsworthy than a cat stuck in a tree!!!!
I have lived in the middle east in Kuwait and oman. We used to get BBC world and CNN in Oman. It is very blatantly obvious how sensationalized and ridiculous the news is in the US. Even countries that are placed lowest on the list have a news around the world section. I live in the US for the past 6 years.
Most Americans are ignorant about the rest of the world. It is very evident in the colleges of this country where time and again I have been asked stupid and ignorant questions about India and the Middle East by so called educated people.
(a) It's their job.
(b) They're trained to not fuck up the crime scene, and pretty often they don't, whereas a reporter's primary concern will often be getting grisly photographs to maximize ratings and to hell with maintaining the integrity of the chain of evidence. Many will happily choose ratings over due process, given the treatments given to Jewell and Hatfill (sp?).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
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.
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.
That is weird, I saw tons of porn in Gardenmoen airport (the main airport outside of Oslo)
Which is different because in the states you can't put porn where kids can get it.
Aren't Norwegian cabdrivers handing out condoms?
I thought sex and scenery were the only things going for Norway, I guess now freedom of the press can tie for #3
If memory serves, most firearms deaths in the United States are /not/ accidental -- they're either suicides (quite a few) or homicides (quite often among acquaintances, incidentally; strangers may have less _reason_ to kill you than a competitor, or somebody who feels you crossed him, or so forth).
"Random citizen blows away another one without intending to do so" is pretty rare compared to your run-of-the-mill deliberate shooting, even during hunting seasons.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Religion in North America is not treated special, simply like a charity. There are NO SPECIAL POWERS.
That's why religion is in such a deep crisis in the USA. Who is going to worship a God that doesn't even have special powers?
RMN
~~~
In time of war, the government assumes extraordinary powers, temporarily restricting the rights of the people in order to save them from a greater imminent threat to those same rights. It is no coincidence that the US Government has chosen the terminology of war to pursue its recent goals. We have now a War on
l ofrights. phps _of_f reedom/constitution/constitution_transcription.htm l
-Poverty
-Crime
-Drugs
-Terrorism
The beauty (if you happen to be inside the government monopoloy) of a war on an abstract concept is that the concept never surrenders and the war never ends, so the temporary extra powers become permanent, and eventually taken for granted.
Any erosion in press freedom (or press access to government officials) is part of a larger context of increasing government size and power, and reciprocally eroding human rights. This sort of report is the equivalent of an annoying fly biting the sheeple; they will quickly go back to grazing.
Those who are concerned should review their Constitution and Bill of Rights:
http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/bil
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charter
and check them for erosion. Those who are really concerned should join the Free State Project:
http://www.FreeStateProject.org
Ever hear of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
. 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
I can publish / say anything I damn well want.
From the article:
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.
Okay so wait, journalists are knowingly witholding information during legal proceedings, and going into areas which they do not have authorization to be. Going with this reasoning we could also rank poorly because journalists were arrested for harassment, breaking and entering, slander and even assault and battery. Sounds to me like it's their own damn fault they got busted.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
This story is labelled "Censorship" - should be "United States"
The rest of the world (oh yeah, that's more Internet users than USA - even Europe is more than USA) don't really care about your country.
For all the "free speech" bullshit, face some facts for once.
This is a US national story, not a Censorship story.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
All of our fine Nation's problems stem from the educational system, which has lost all its power, even to the point that teachers are afraid to discipline ANY student in ANY way for fear of getting on national television. As a matter of fact, even private school teachers I know of award A's and B's to students who are obviously failing the class, simply because the school is afraid of parents pulling their children out of the school. Students graduate high school without knowing jack. This has turned into a daycare system rather than an educational one. This leads to problems such as:
- People believing EVERYTHING they read.
- People believing EVERYTHING they hear.
- People expecting the government to take care of everything, entering into every aspect of private citizens' lives and pocketbooks in the process, as opposed to the correct system called individual responsibility.
Fix the educational system, get rid of 90% of the government (thus creating opportunities for private businesses to handle the functions that have no business being in the government), and get rid of the crap that hacks away at our individual freedoms one by one.With an academic system in place that teaches people to speak and write correctly from day one, and no restrictions on what you can say and write, we'll have a lot of bullshit to filter through, but at least we'll have our freedom, and that's worth more than all the alleged safety in the world.
German news magazine Der Spiegel has an article on the same topic, with a bit more background information. Also in German.
President of the United States, George W. Bush, when asked about the concerns of the two countries, responded "New Zealand? Isn't that part of Australia anyway?"
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Yeah I would read the icelandic press but I don't know what the pop up thats says "farðu bandarikjunum" means.
--Joey
You think they didn't know? I would rather suspect that they did --
A _I naction/MarySchiavoStory.html
I chose my words poorly. I was actually being sardonic, but that didn't come across.
I *do* think they knew that an airliner could be commandeered and used as a large guided missile. It was only partly due to the stupidity of not applying the 80/20 rule and doing the simple things.
but the economics and politics of the time prohibited doing much about it.
1- Airlines weren't exactly in great financial shape before then.
2- Security in terms of intrusive searches and El Al-style pre-boarding interviews (the 'correct' way to handle it, probably, from a security POV) takes a huge amount of time, training and money.
3- Adding things like bomb detectors increases time delays due to needing to check out false positives, e.g. nylon stockings giving off nitrogen vapors.
4- The customers were already pissed off in terms of delays, pre-boarding waits, and so forth.
Security costs. How secure do you want to be? I'll take the cheap 80%. El Al, after the famous hijacking 30 or so years ago came to a vital conclusion. Nobody, ever, gets into the cockpit. How expensive is that? How much does it inconvenience passengers? False positives? nope. It costs, next to nada.
Any airline that would have unilaterally boosted security to the point where it were actually meaningful (e.g. that hasn't been achieved yet...)
Locking the door would have been very meaningful to the cities of New York and Washington. The passengers might still have been screwed.
might have been pushed into bankruptcy by customers fleeing to competitors who could field many more flights per day with far less inconvenience.
I'm no risk management expert, but I don't believe that. ValueJet went under because they were slack and carried hazardous cargo on a passenger flight.
Were the FAA to have tried, it would have been political suicide for the administration.
I agree, as did Mary Schiavo who saw it all coming.
http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/FA
So, if I turn on the TV - for that is unfortunately where the majority of people get their opinions - how long will I have to wait before I hear something from these pundits? I think my best bet would be PBS or BBC World, but they're hardly the most popular channels.
I think you're dredging the bottom of the barrel a bit: at least one of those guys you mentioned has most of his work published overseas (Time International). It's a sad fact that most "journalists" in the US at the moment will not criticise or contradict the government for fear of appearing unpatriotic. As for the Rabbi, he's been dead 12 years, long after he emigrated to Israel, and was quite an extremist himself - but I guess that's okay as he was on the "right" side.
BTW, pundits is a bad word to use these days as it conjures up images of self declared experts who like the sound of their own voices that appear at times of tragedy. Well, until the facts become known.
This is a lesson we must never forget; that even a Constitutional Democracy isn't immune to falling under the spell of a power-hungry, charismatic dictator.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.
Unfortunately, there's no mention of what ClearChannel can do.
Wow. You must be the greatest reporter on earth after all of that advice. Oh, I'll file those under completely fucking obvious.
/.er. They are, on average, as much of a journalist as I am a server farm admin. Just trying to expand the knowledge.
And refresh my memory on what the PR people do for a living? Fuck up your shit royally is what they do. Put a spin on a tragedy. The only good PR person is the hot young PR person that you're banging after hours.
Otherwise its all this:
"Chemical explosion? What chemical explosion? Oh, you mean those innocent dead people next to the chemical explosion? We'll we didn't tell them to walk down that street?"
Cmon man. You really got to read the gentle subtext about this. I am not referring this to other journalists, I am giving an example of the kind of things that cause journalists to go to jail to the average
However they all could learn a lot from countries like Sweden which has had a much stronger version integrated into their country's constitution for over 336 years. Basically, the only exceptions are individual privacy, protection of plant and animal species, national defence, national economy, and prevention of crime. Every thing else is there for the asking.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yes, just watch Al Qaeda attack Finland next!
Tanzania was suveyed, but not New Zealand... I'm feeling a little left out here... I mean, throw us a bone already.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Norway may have free press, but it must have the most crappy and populistic jounalists in the world. All major newspapers contain loads of meaningless information about celebrities, and tons of factual errors.
Almost everyone I know are sick and tired of their bullshit.
The media situation here is a bit confusing. The Irish constitution preaches freedom of religion, yet Catholicism pervades the media, currently in the form of reports of priests playing with little boys. The RTÉ (state TV) has a daily Catholic "Angelus" (some kind of sunset prayer), yet Richard Dawkins was on a few weeks ago, dumping on organized religion. When a jounalist is killed here, for getting too close to outing a drug dealer, it gets made into a Hollywood movie!
(this is not a
This is a lesson we must never forget; that even a Constitutional Democracy isn't immune to falling under the spell of a power-hungry, charismatic dictator.
Such as Senator Palpatine.
The United States stood at 17 in a world-wide index of the journalist organization "reporter without borders"
An issue with America is that news may not get reported that is not in the interests of the media giants that are reporting it.
Among the 20 countries with the "roughest offences" were European countries former Soviet republics, African, asiatic and Latin American states.
Sounds about right. You can't have a bullshit state with a free press.
"That is weird, I saw tons of porn in Gardenmoen airport (the main airport outside of Oslo)"
This is the soft core porn. Shops are allowed to put this wherever they want. It cannot contain any erect male genetalia, although I find that kind of sexist.
"Aren't Norwegian cabdrivers handing out condoms?"
Yeah, but this have more to do with sexually transmitted diseases.
"I thought sex and scenery were the only things going for Norway, I guess now freedom of the press can tie for #3"
Actually, we're also pretty much up there in music. No, not the Britney top-10 stuff, but jazz, electronica and the dark and scary kinds of rock.
Yeah it's volunteer based but those volunteers are 18+. not 50.... The 50+ rednecks already are taking up arms, and have been for a couple decades at least. And you know what? I am only scared of them accidentally shooting their kids; I am not the least bit scared of them shooting at the cops. Because they won't. And I don't think the cops are the least bit scared of them doing so; they are scared of them shooting at their wives and their former employers. Look, I've actually read Thomas Jefferson, and I can tell you for a fact, the rednecks in the woods do not represent him.
Your point is what? There is an armed terrorist group on the verge of destroying the PTO? I doubt most militia wannabes could distinguish the PTO from the PTA. They're after the BATF and FBI, not the PTO, and if they ever actually did anything to threaten any of those organizations, they would be dead in the water, whether they did it with explosives, firearms, Draino, or fucking cheerios.
Or a non-redneck terrorist could with the help of a few individuals pull off a "fight club" type situation.
Which means what? That they could hire Brad Pitt to kick my ass? I'll take my chances.
What would the rest of the world do if the "policeman" was temporarily out of commision?
Temporarily kick anybody's ass that tries any bullshit just because the cops are out of the picture.
Honestly I am not afraid of the federal government or of any terrorist (Muslim or Xian) taking my rights/guns/property/speech/wellbeing... I am afraid of my fellow citizen voluntarily giving up these things in exchange for a false promise of protection from fucking ghosts.
The guy who was shot in sweden lived (though just barely, he took a 9mm in the chest), eventually made a full recovery, went to trial and recieved a harsh sentence for throwing stones at the police.
The guy in italy however was shot in the head and died at the scene.
I had friends at the scene in Sweden, and it was a really fucked up mess. Total chaos, with protesters throwing stones at the police and the police throwing, and finally shooting back. Total confusion with totally innocent people getting in the way.
The aftermath is still playing out in the courts.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Most of those shootings are by people who have guns illegally. Legal gun owners tend to follow the law, you know.
Murphy was an optimist.
The PIRA has assassinated journalists when it has suited them, as have other paramilitary organisations (both republican and loyalist) in Northern Ireland.
Silencing critical opposition has long been a strategy of terrorist groups, and the PIRA is no exception to this rule.
I can't find a link right now, but I do recall the PIRA claiming responsibility for the murder of a journalist who was investigating the links between paramilitaries and drugs running (organised crime is the main source of funds for these organisations). If I remember correctly, this murder was of a catholic woman, and took place in the Republic of Ireland, something the majority of vocal republicans found particularly distasteful.
Of course, the PIRA has killed over 1,800 men, women and children from various backgrounds - soldiers, policemen, emergency servicemen, politicians and ordinary men and women - so it's not surprising that there are a few reporters amongst its long list of victims.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
We are the freest society on earth. Until you can point to a freer one, you're the one with dElusions.
Yawn, stretch, here we go: Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands to say a few from around where I live.
And guess what? I don't even try to point out which one of those tops the list.
You only come off sounding like a bitter, America hating, blame America for the world's ills Socialist.
and think you are the nutcase, not me. Try a decent argument, it plays better to an intelligent audience.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
so is romania (45th) not considered part of europe anymore?
Have you ever actually seen a gun? They are quite easy to use. You can sum up an entire gun safety course with one line:
There is no question that guns are dangerous, but they are really only accidentally dangerous in the hands of small children and people under the influence of alcohol (or some other drug). Your neighbor is not going to "forget" how to use his gun and shoot you.
You must not have heard of, among other things, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. How about all of those surveillance cameras all over the place? 1984 just happened a few years later than predicted.
Maybe you missed this article about how they're censoring Google.
Given that they issue guns to everybody (full-automatic machine guns in most cases, which are kept at home), I don't see how this strengthens your case. If anything, it's further proof that an armed society is a polite society.
I don't know enough about them one way or the other, so I won't comment.
Fear the government that fears your gun.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Here's an interesting fact: The government has a lot more guns, jails, and other things to make your life miserable with than it did 226 years ago. Good luck with your little campaign of terror. For now, I'll stick to voting and other more traditional methods of political change.
Yes. A previous post of mine a few weeks ago mentioned this. Hitler simply took the already present anger over Germany's treatment, focused it on a small group, and rode it to power.
First heard this from my high school history teacher. All other accounts I had heard before that glossed over it,
Sometimes with history it's the really important points which get glossed over.
and made it seem that he magically made the Germans hate the Jews. He only found a way to direct their hatred, and the Jews were a convenient target.
It dosn't appear to have been specifically directed against Jews, though. Just about anyone not a "patriotic German" was a convenient target.
Actually, that's in the Declaration of Independence, not the US Constitution.
"...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
I still argue that there are responsibilities of good citizenship that come with the rights we enjoy as citizens.
Don't get me wrong: I strongly believe in and support the first amendment. But I also believe that you're a coward if you hide behind the First Amendment and don't have the courage stand behind your words.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Not all journalists are writers. Look up my bio on
I would however, love to send you a tape of my best work. OR I could send you all of my work on VHS if you have a couple of packing crates and a truck.
SO FUCK OFF.
It's not changing the subject. When the government says it has a cut of your income, that's a restriction on your freedom. When 50% or more of the fruits of your labors go to support the government, that's restricting your freedom in the most fundamental way. I ASSUME that's what you mean by "changing the subject." If so, then how do you address the restrictions of gun ownership, political speech, and the absence of double jeopardy protections in many European countries?
/. problem. It's impossible to have a nuanced, intelligent conversation with a non-American about America because non-Americans assume that Americans are all dumb, unsophisticated, provincial boobs who couldn't find their butts in the dark with both hands. While there are boobs in every country and we may or may not have more of our share, we also have well-read, intelligent, sophisticated people who are also patriots.
Also, I think you're forgetting that the article that started this discussion was written to compare freedom of the press in almost all of the nations of the world. And I was responding to people who said Americans only think we're free. I didn't submit the article or post to it originally. I simply responded to closed-minded, ignorant posters who think that being anti-American = being sophisticated.
Here's a big
Just because I defend American doesn't mean I'm blind to its faults. And my saying that America is freer than other countries is not an ignorant knee-jerk statement. I gave facts. No one has addressed those facts or been willing to talk about the freedoms I mentioned above.
You are out of your league, talking about American life. I live here, remember? Metal detectors in schools are unfortunate, but have nothing to do with government intrusion in our lives and contrary to what you see in the media, are rather rare. I have a fence around my back yard only because that's American custom. It's for keeping the DOG in the yard, not for keeping bad guys out.
You don't have a spying organization? Really? I don't know where you live, but I don't believe you. Go ahead and let me know so I can find out the name of your "spying organization."
There was one small grain of truth in what you wrote. We do have a holdover from the cold war. We cherish freedom and we talk about it a lot. And we don't take it for granted. That's why we still have it.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
I have no argument with any of your points. Just pointing out some different restrictions on freedom in Europe since so many bash the US in ignorance
:-D
Gun ownership is restricted much more in Europe than in the US. I present that as a fact rather than as a value judgment. I have no intention of arguing the 2nd Amendment here ad nauseum because I have no interest in the subject or the argument.
BTW, I love France. It's my favorite place to visit, and I would love to live there for a few years. I speak French reasonably well.
And for your amusement:
Things I love about France:
1. French people
2. Food & Wine
3. The high level of debate and analytical thought
4. Giverny
5. Museums
6. Paris
7. The south
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.