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US Plunges To 46th In World Press Freedom Index
schwit1 writes "Reporters Without Borders puts out their Press Freedom Index every year, and the 2014 ranking came out today. It was not a good showing for the U.S. Specifically, the U.S. registered one of the steepest falls of all nations, down 13 slots to the #46 position, just above Haiti and just below Romania."
It's too bad that the /. editor that posted this didn't dig into this shoddy piece of journalism before posting. You can read more about how arbitrary this "ranking" is at On The Media and then move along, there's nothing to see here.
Think for yourself, but have a look here.
Their statistics suck, even if their principles are sound.
According to this article, there are plenty of reasons to doubt these rankings, even if press freedom in the U.S. is worrying. And ranking changes like these are not new. Here are the U.S.' rankings over the last 10 years (there's a typo in their own press release, the U.S. actually fell 14 slots):
2004: 22
2005: 44
2006: 53
2007: 48
2008: 36
2009: 20
2010: 20
2011: 47
2012: 27
2013: 32
2014: 46
That seems...a bit inconsistent. Again, that's not to say there isn't plenty to worry about in the U.S., but I'd still take these rankings with a grain of salt.
I'm not as convinced as many people are that the sky is falling, so I suspect the economy will eventually improve.
The thing that all the knee jerk poster here seemed to miss is that this is the first year on a totally different survey methodology.
Reporters Sans Borders (RSF) totally tossed out their prior methodology and went with a new questionnaire: http://rsf.org/index/qEN.html
Since this isn't the only source of input, you have to read also their methodology
which includes things never before even considered. It turns out that most of the qualitative measurements are done by RSF people themselves, rather than from input from these people in the field.
Quantitative questions about the number of violations of different kinds are
handled by our staff. They include the number of journalists, media assistants and netizens who
were jailed or killed in the connection with their activities,
So "netizens" are who exactly?
And why does that matter? Well, since they don't define it, we have to assume that anyone releasing information
over the internet counts as a netizen. So one Bradley Manning (35 year sentence) can account for 90% of the "Violence against reporters/netizens) score.
North Korea, not having any Netizens, presumably gets a perfect score in this regard. I suggest the whole thing is hopelessly biased.
As with any newly invented scale, you have to give it a few years for the truth (and the bias) to come out.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Did you even click the link? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...
The Saudi national, who has been held for 11 years and is one of 164 inmates, has not been charged with any offence and has been cleared for release from the prison in Cuba.
He was cleared for release in 2007, still hasn't happened. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
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it's that "under god" part that got added to the pledge at some point which is hurting us...
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
There's no need to suppress press. The US found that out long ago.
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.