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Press freedom
GarconDuMonde writes "Reporters San Frontiers has released it's third annual worldwide index of press freedom. Although the majority of top-ranking countries are from northern Europe, it is perhaps more interesting to note where countries such as Switzerland, Italy, the UK and the USA fall (1, 39, 28 and 22, respectively)."
The country responsible for getting the Indymedia servers pulled?
... but don't practice it. It's pretty sad when you have to cringe every time you hear "... land of the free ..." Not that the U.S. is a bad place to live, mind you. The United States is the best place to live if you happen to like money.
Comparing the Western European countries with vast freedoms of the press to the dictatorial or communist countries with outright persecution of journalists is eye-opening. What is most disturbing is that in this day and age that there still exists repression of thought in some countries. Control the media and you can control the minds of your subjects. To have a truly free thinking society means that the media cannot be controlled.
The only problem with this is that it leads to significant growth of tabloid press. Look at Europe again with its outrageous papers like the Sun or Pravda. Just because the press is free does not mean that the information is better, just more voluminous.
Like the internet, anyone in a free press country can publish what they like. Like the internet, it is up to the reader to filter out the gems from the trash.
It's interesting to note the results and see why it's difficult to trust ANY news coming from Iraq.
How are we expected to know what's really going on when reporters feel threatened and ordinary Iraqis still don't trust the media after years of it being state controlled?
There are other documented examples or Arab gangs intimidating the press to sing their own tune and it pretty well rights off any ability for readers to discern between news versus propaganda.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
"Reporters Without Borders compiled the index by asking its partner organisations (14 freedom of expression organisations in five continents), its 130 correspondents around the world, as well as journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists, to answer 52 questions to indicate the state of press freedom in 167 countries"
So this leaves lots unsaid. Basically, if correspondents say they don't have press freedom, they don't. Doesn't seem like a very scientific study to me.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
That's the country on the top of the list.
The truth is its worse than in the U.S.
In Denmark you can be jailed
for making a comment online if a judge determines that it is racist.
Makes you wonder what the motivation behind this study is.
I think that the biggest threat to the free press in the United States today comes from the owners of media conglomerates, not the government. The continuing centralization of media ownership and the ongoing lobbying campaign in support of media consolidation leave us with an oligarchy of giant media groups. Often, the major media outlets of a city are owned by one or two large corporations, with interlocking ownership.
Under those conditions, the views of the owners are propagated without check, because there simply is no real independent mass media in most parts of the US today. They censor themselves, so the government doesn't have to.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's what they had to say about the USA and Canada The two North American giants score well A police raid in Canada on the home of journalist Juliet O'Neil and the national regulatory authority's stand against the pan-Arab radio station Al-Jazeera and the local station CHOI FM downgraded the country to 18th place. Violations of the privacy of sources, persistent problems in granting press visas and the arrest of several journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations kept the United States (22nd) away from the top of the list. Really, we're being accused of minor things in the grand scheme of things... the top of the list contries are just small enough to be lucky to have not had any incidents.
The reason is that they allow themselves to be completely neutral. They don't care if they have George Bush's money in a bank account or Saddam Hussein's money, it's all the same to them.
When a country's government is neutral, it allows for the media to be more openly objective. These laws allow for equal treatment of everyone. The only problem with that is you are --I hate to sound cliche-- "helping terrorism."
well, close to the time you indicated (1954) US still had Senator McCarthy, so I am not sure what you mean?
Americans frequently claim that others are "jealous" of their freedom.
It's interesting that they use "jealous" rather than "envious" because "jealous" implies a limited resource (two women wanting to date the same man, for example) whereas "envious" implies an unlimited resource (envying your friend's new computer - new computers are available to anyone who wants to buy one).
There seems to be a subconscious fear in the United States that if the rest of the world gets "freedom" or "wealth" that the United States will somehow lose it.
There is no reason the whole world can't have high levels of freedom and a high standard of living and high levels of education.
The fear that the United States is preventing other countries from having these things seems to lead to the fear that if other countries get these things then the United States will lose them.
Of course, depsite what most Americans seem to think, the United States doesn't come in first in most measures of quality of life (freedom of press, per capita income, education level, etc.) anyway so it's not clear what they are so worried about.
It is sad and somewhat disturbing that my old home country, South Africa is only four places behind the bastion of the free world. Remembering back to the censorship and talking to those still there, I worry about what we don't hear in the mainstream (or perhaps any) press in the US. When did this situation start to occur, i wonder?
You have 100% freedom with blogs, and they don't have borders.
My examples here and here and in my sig. Visit them and enjoy your freedoms.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
In general, it refers to how much freedom members of the press are given, not to how free speech/publication is. For example, the US is cited for trouble giving press visas, and the arrest of reporters during demonstrations. It makes no mention of any other restrictions on speech, no mention of a climate that is hostile to some forms of the press, no mention of the way that the president grants the media access and chooses questions.
The study seems to completely ignore non-official members of the press. A few years back, this would have been fine. However, the formality of the press is dispersing. Just look at the blogging community. That's the press. I think it's a useful metric, but definitely not the final statement on the issue.
Freedom of the Press does not mean that press is fair. Fair has nothing to do with it.
Freedom of the Press means that if there is a right-wing channel, you are free to start a left wing channel. It allows for people to openly broadcast/write/etc whatever they like and not be censored because it agaisnt the goverment/an allie/a person.
Don't get mixed up, you can never have a truely unbaised report. The best you can have is a broad range to pick and choose from so that you can make your own decisions.
I remember once this subject came up, and somebody pointed out that even though Canada scored higher, they actually do things such as filter pamphlets from certain political groups, including certain Jewish groups. Freedom of press and freedom of speach can be two very different things. Ideally, both rankings should be presented together, otherwise you give a lopsided picture.
Table-ized A.I.
You're looking at this too practically.
Freedom isn't much good, admittedly, if no one bothers to exercise it. What this article measures, however, is not the quality of information provided by the local press; rather, it is the ease with which journalists are able to obtain information in a country without the government interfering.
American journalists don't take much advantage of the US's open nature, because our private media are here to sell news, and Americans culturally just don't care about what's happening in the world. I really don't think there's much of a conspiracy here. The US is a huge country, the most powerful in the world, bordered by another huge country that speaks the same language it does. People in the US just don't care too much about the rest of the world unless it affects their lives directly, and the truth is that as far as US citizens are concerned, what happens in most other countries has little bearing on their daily lives.
This is hard to understand for a lot of Europeans, who mostly come from small countries that don't have the same natural resources the US does. For someone in France or Germany, what happens in Poland, Belgium, the UK, Turkey -- this all can and does affect their daily lives, economic stability, etc, in a way that is evident to the average joe. And so, not surprisingly, these people are better informed than Americans when it comes to world issues.
Now, the press freedom in the US is pretty good. By this I mean that a reporter from Le Monde can go to the US with the intent to write an exposé on American government corruption, for example, and will run into very little static doing it. A New York Post reporter, in a similar way, will have little trouble getting the information he wants in France, even if his piece is called "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys: How a country entirely populated by homosexuals manages to remain adequately populated." This is because both the US and France are very free countries. And while the journalists of other countries may use this to abuse them, they understand that keeping information available is important.
China and North Korea, on the other hand, will want to "approve" what you write before letting you do anything. They may even offer to write it for you.
That's what's meant by press freedom. Not "is the local press open and non-self-censoring" but rather "do journalists have the freedom to ask questions and get them answered without too much interference."
The US scores badly on the first but passably well (although not as well as I, as an American, would like) on the second. This article is about the second, not the first.
Being 22nd in the World, I am surprised that John Ashcroft didn't invoke the Patriot Act to suppress this report! I will put the USA up against any other country in the world on the number of press outlets that are operating within our borders, print, radio, TV and internet. The Freedom of the Press is so prevalent in Bush's USA that I am almost going deaf from the cacophony of screams of people saying their right to free speech is being abridged.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Steven Colbert: After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who said "Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach."
Jon Stewart: No, that was Stalin. Thomas Jefferson said that he'd "Rather have free press and no government, than a government and no free press".
Steven Colbert: Well, what else would you expect from a slave-banging, Hitler loving queer?
- Peter Brodersen; professional nerd
The United States is now hated around the world because our citizens are so misinformed and ignorant about the world
No, your citizens have always been misinformed and ignorant. That is not why the US is now hate. It's now hated because it invades countries, kills innocent people, tortures people, and tries to impose its beliefs and way life on everybody else. That is why the USA is hated. But then again, being an American you might be too ignorant to know that.
BTW, nobody in the rest of the world gives a fuck about your freedom of the press or any other freedom. The rest of the world simply wants USA to leave them the fuck alone.
Surely the major goal of the co-ordinated 911 attackers was to instigate a defensive and vulnerable posture from US government, media and population.
The goal was to provoke a rash aggressive response which would get the US into the "quagmire" they're in now, with no way out and getting worse by the day.
I don't fully understand this american hatred of Switzerland, since it mostly seems to fall in one of two categories: The Banks hiding illegal money and Switzerland's neutrality.
As regards the banks, they are Switzerland's biggest employers and so do get more priviliges than they should, and they definitely did take anyone's money in the past. They don't, however, do this any longer. Saddam Hussein's money has been frozen for years and the Swiss authorities do give information on account holders to judicial enquiries from countries with which Switzerland has legal agreements. That is why criminals prefer to keep their money in the Cayman islands these days.
But I never hear any such moral preaching against the Cayman Islands.
Secondly, Switzerland is a tiny country that was surrounded by hostile nations for most of its history. For that reason the Swiss decided to become neutral, as it kept them from having to go through the ravages of the first and second world wars. Switzerland takes its neutrality seriously and doesn't support bullshit wars like the fucking stunt you yanks pulled in Iraq, or the fucking stunt that Saddam pulled in Kuwait.
Switzerland is by no means perfect, (I live here and don't really like it or the people) but it minds its own business and would like other countries to do the same.
I think you people who constantly preach about how morally corrupt Switzerland is are just ashamed of all the crap that your own country does.
I can't see why a smaller country would have less corruption than a large one. Proportionally, of course. It seems more likely to me corruption would flourish in a small country, where everyone (who is anyone, at least) knows everyone.
If you actually look at the corruption ranking you'll see that there are plenty of small countries at the bottom, including Haiti at the very last position.
Living in Finland, I have some thoughts on these studies.
Firstly, most of the journalists, at least here, get educated on universities that have rather dominant leftist atmostphere. It is easy to notice that the common logic among journalists is that good journalism is so called "critical" journalism, which in turn is essentially journalism that must find a contrast with things that don't belong directly to the most obvious sphere of control for them. With their average political background, that usually means privately owned companies and persons that have politically very different world view from their own. It may be very subtle discrimination, but after decades of such opinions among the press, it becomes a public fact.
Also, many international journalist organisations were strongly supported by USSR. Their views might have been on the same side before that support began, but certainly the views intensified with that support. It is rather questionable if USSR was there just for free press.
Then there are things I want to say about the press in Finland, specifically. There's only one newspaper that can be considered of national coverage - Helsingin Sanomat. Other newspapers are either regional or limit to swedish, which is mother tongue for only couple percent of the population. There are also two daily yellow press "newspapers", but calling those true journalism is a joke. So, even if there's freedom of press, diversity of press is highly questionable on newspaper side. Fortunately, in television, there are three organisations that have good national coverage - but depth of television journalism has always its limits.
And as last thing, anecdotal example from the local scare tactics. As there is no (external) censorship, most attempts to control the media show up as court threats when specific persons get bad light in the "yellow" press, often resulting from fabricated or strongly exaggerated facts. There's a recent example that illustrated different hidden standards for freedom of press, though: Both the person in the article and the journalist were threatened by court when an article about prime ministers' father, somewhat controversial person, was published. He claimed in his article that according to some research, caucasians are measurably more intelligent on average than africans, and many asians are even more intelligent, and that this has strong element regarding the chances of nations to prosper. The actual threat came from governmental anti-racism ombudsman, and probably reflects the politico-journalistic climate around here - any discussion on these kinds of subjects should be prohibited unless, at least, we, the natives, are on the bottom. Fortunately, the legistlative bodies in Finland are reasonably detached from political views and dismissed the case - after all, the subject matter was controversial, not clearly against any proven fact, and that scientific research and press coverage of it enjoys especially high freedoms as well as high peer review scrutiny - which must not be censorship, though.
i'm sure the united states would rank higher on that freedom than most european countries.
It is not illegal to criticize the Chancellor's hair. "Illegal" means contrary to a statute; an offence which is prosecutable by the State itself. In the "case of the Chancellor's Hair", a lawsuit was brought by Schroder himself for libel. There is nothing on Germany's statutes which makes it illegal to criticize anyone's hair; however the hair in question has the right to fight back...
Not "Reporters San Frontiers" as stated in the summary. They deserve respect, and as such deserve correct orthograph (or am I the only one who cares ?)
Besides, Nobody's "responsible" for it. Everybody says it was somebody else, or that they're not allowed to talk about pending criminal investigations, or things like that.
At least under the last few years of US procedures for computer search and seizure rules, the Indymedia attacks were mismanaged - they're supposed to take a copy and return everything ASAP for most cases, and they're supposed to be extremely careful of systems containing journalistic works in progress, which Indymedia pretty obviously had. And they didn't handle it that way.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This claim that if some larger or more influential countries would take the attitude of the Swiss is ignorant.
It is attitudes like that that resulted in the massacres in Rawanda. It is that very same attitude that is resulting in the same thing occuring in Sudan. Want more, Bosnia, Afghanistan, China, and even Checyna.
Seems to me that the real issue is not that some countries are more influential but WHICH countries that are and what they are doing.
I will take the current attitude of countries that do take action. Far better they do than we end up with millions more dead just because we were afraid to we might offend someone by acting up. Perhaps we can avoid another Hitler if we keep acting, after all he was harmless until he invaded Poland, right?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So much of the national press in the UK is owned by non-uk, non-european nationals who impose their own political stance and prejudices on their editors that it is not surprising that it does not score as well as others. http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/me dia/mediaown.html suggests that Rupert Murdoch, through News International, controls 37% of daily newspaper sales and 39% of Sunday sales.
Even where uk companies own newspapers their proprietors have traditionally exercised a strong influence on their editors, The 'newspaper barons' Rothermere, Northgate et al and more recently Conrad Black, a Canadian turned Briton in order to accept a peerage, all saw to it that their editors took a particular line - as of course, is their right. I guess it depends on your definition of 'press freedom'.
Here is the reasoning behind the US being so low on the chart...according to the article:
"Violations of the privacy of sources, persistent problems in granting press visas and the arrest of several journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations kept the United States (22nd) away from the top of the list."
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Murdoch was born Australian but left there for the UK where he started News International and aquired 'The Sun', amongst other newspapers. He later moved to the US where he gained US citzenship to get around certain restrictions on non-US citizens or corporations owning media companies.
The nearest to a free press these days is the blogosphere, but even that is under threat.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Some of them are novel and have not yet been widely understood. We may employ rather modern technology to process, vet, and filter information through mechanisms not so dissimilar to slashdot's, that could make many organized disinformation campaigns more difficult. It is difficult to imagine such as-yet-unseen systems operating in a socially important way, on a large scale, but it was difficult to imagine the internet itself 15 years ago. The idea is simply to augment existing social and democratic conventions with software that can allow them to scale better.
In addition, surveillance society is coming, but not in the way anyone expects. Within a decade or two audio/video recording devices with effectively unlimited recording capacity will be small enough to be a fashion accessory, or for that matter just part of your apparel. Because they can be carried everywhere and recording constantly, they will be; this will change our whole notion of privacy, really change society as we know it. These little bugs will penetrate newsrooms, courtrooms, boardrooms, and back rooms, despite every attempt to keep them out. They will witness protests, halt arguments about facts, and generally improve the quality of and availability of first-generation source material by an order of magnitude. They will, most of all, make organized secrecy conspicuous, especially because "open" companies, and even political candidates, will win in the marketplace.
Democracy will always be threatened, but it can never be entirely stopped until we lose our ability to be creative in protecting it.
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First the State Police said that our station didn't qualify because we didn't have a full time news department (total crap). After much "discussion" and producing copious records affirming our position they backed off. The other requirement was I needed three recommendations from other press card holders. I quickly found out that everyone wanted at least $500 for their signature. I complained to the State Police about this and asked if they would simply grant me (and others from our station in the future) an ID based on the fact that we produced over two hours everyday of fresh news content everyday and not on who I bribed. They said no. Months later we coughed up the "tribute" money and submitted the paperwork. It was rejected without comment. I was privately told that I would never get an ID because I questioned "their system". Repeated requests for a press ID were rejected, always without comment. BTW, I was a pretty upstanding person back then, in the military reserves with a security clearance and nothing more than two speeding tickets on my record, so the reason for the rejection "on the surface" was never known.
In every state in the US access to press credentials is controlled by the State. Without these official press credentials one has very limited access to news events. While covering a protest my company car (a white wagon with the name of the station painted all over the damn thing) was towed from a legal parking spot while cars with press plates were left alone. Many times "freedom of the press" doesn't apply to those without that State issued ID. Can there be true freedom of the press when the state controls who are the "press"? I think not.
Last night I was watching the after game party in the Fenway on the four stations covering it. One of the stations repeated avoided showing any police "takedowns" of the people there. After the Boston Police killed a bystander last week (Victoria Snelgrove of East Bridgewater) and seriously wounding others one would think these stations and their news staff would want to catch any similar interactions. Instead what I saw a few times was over 10 Boston City policeman in full military battle gear taking down a single drunk that just wasn't obeying their orders quick enough with the coverage being quickly cut off by the station (by changing cameras or moving the action out of frame). Self censorship to have a good relationship with the police is still censorship. If the State Police decided to pull their press cards they easily bankrupt the station.
This is not the picture of the police storming a tv or radio station and shutting them down. This is the police controlling the station's blood supply (their money) and saying "we won't shut you down, your creditors will with our help so play nice with us".
This is the state of the press in the US. They can't take your voice but they can get the private sector to take your press and your home. Thankfully the web has made this more difficult. I seriously don't feel free to sign my name to this comment. I think I'll keep my mouth shut and fly under their radar "thank you very much".
It really doesn't sound like a free nation after all does it?
At the same time, we (the US) created Saddam Hussein and are responsible for much of the power of the Taliban. Arguably we're creating the problems, or at least, some of them. The question is, are we actually helping the world more than we're hurting it, in this regard? Of course, a broader question is whether we help the world more than hurt it in all areas, but that's so subjective it's basically impossible to measure.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"