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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."
Free nation! Under God! Best thing since apple pie.
The US has really fallen from its optimistic condition so many decades ago. And that failure is not the worst thing about it. It's the fact that no one in the US seems to care.
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.
The last true great work of independent journalistic investigationn was the Watergate affair. Since then, so-called journalists have been repeating the government's party line verbatim, or reporting on trivial shit that doesn't matter.
If anything, the Snowden documents, which should have been a bomb for the government, have never been exploited, and show that the 4th power is the lapdog of the 3 first, and has been for a very long time.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Because those making the leaks need to flee the country and take asylum elsewhere, or end up imprisoned for years.
It's not about the presence of the leaks, it's about the way that the government has persecuted the leakers, and the members of the press they went to.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Press freedom's drop was noticed because of Manning and Snowdon: now American-born reporters are afraid to come home. They've been threatened with both criminal charges and extrajudicial punishment for publishing the leaks. Net result? They get published in the UK.
davecb@spamcop.net
but this is just a rank based on a number calculated according to an arbitrary weighting of factors. It is possible that the rank drop of the US might have been less had the factors used in calculating the score been weighted differently, or the cases used to arrive at the score been characterized somewhat differently.
For example, the score weights "Pluralism" twice as much as "self-censorship" and four times as much as "transparency". Why? Can such things be weighted precisely at all?
The scores for these factors are likewise arbitrarily scaled numbers in the range 0-100. The ranking of each country is a linear combination of non-parametric factors; as such the rank on such a score is so arbitrary as to be practically meaningless, or at best very imprecise.
I think such a score might have some value in comparing a country's performance to its prior performance, or even to compare progress made in one country vs. another -- provided it is taken with a large grain of salt. But the nature of the score is such that very little can be inferred about country A vs. country B based on their relative ranks.
As a liberal geek I'm all up for harsh criticism of America as a nascent plutocracy, but this particular story is just manufactured controversy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Because those making the leaks need to flee the country and take asylum elsewhere, or end up imprisoned for years.
It's not about the presence of the leaks, it's about the way that the government has persecuted the leakers, and the members of the press they went to.
First of all... IF Snowden is a LEAKER then, by definition and by virtue of the paperwork he signed the government has the right (if not the obligation) to haul his butt into criminal court and store his living carcass in jail for long periods of time. If convicted...
The government does NOT have a "right" to incarcerate a person indefinitely, without convicting them of a crime.
Conversely, Edward Snowden does have a right to a fair and free trial, to face his accusers and the evidence they present against him, and to be judged by a jury of his peers.
None of which will happen under the current government.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
We need to turn our fake democracy into a real one, where our voice is actually being listened to.
And I believe us "nerds" can actually make this happen.
What we need is a moderated forum (perhaps like Slashdot) integrated into congress, and MCs being required to spend at least X hours per day on this forum answering questions. The moderation system has to be designed by academics, such that the system prevents abuse and unjustified censoring by design.
Also, we need a better voting system (since uneducated people ruin democracy, e.g., by being susceptible to populist sentiment).
Perhaps something along the lines of PageRank, where each voter selects N random people he/she trusts, and from the gigantic graph that results we can derive mathematically the outcome of the election. Of course, here also academics are needed to design the system and prevent abuse.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Not that I'm totally happy with the situation, but I wonder if this story is a bit exaggerated. Reporters Without Borders says that they made changes to their methodology. Suddenly the U.S. drops in rank. I think those two facts are related.
Proverbs 21:19
None of which will happen under the current government.
How on earth can you KNOW that he would be unfairly treated? All they've done so far is to issue a warrant for his arrest and invalidated his passport, which is totally legal and within the bounds of the law.
I hate to break this to you, but Snowden *would* be fairly tried if he turned himself in to the USA or if they had managed to arrest him. There is ZERO evidence otherwise. He's lucky that it's the USA that's after him, because other countries would have killed him a long time ago. (And don't fool yourself, if the USA wanted him dead sans a trial, he'd be room temperature.)
So stop with this "He's being unfairly treated" nonsense. Nothing is further from the truth.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
None of which will happen under the current government.
How on earth can you KNOW that he would be unfairly treated?
You mean, aside from the existence of Gitmo, the repeated threats of death from various US officials, and the treatment Bradley/Chelsea Manning received when he/she was suspected of whistle-blowing?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Wow, did you really just defend Gitmo? Because holding someone for 12 years without any sort of charge. Yeah, way to wave the 'freedom' flag.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...
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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.
Well, they can't win. If they stay anonymous, people will call it fake. If they go public, they're attention whores.
It's actually sad how we treat people who put their very life on the line to protect our liberty.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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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You're really not reading the link are you?
Look, GITMO is a *bad* situation with solutions that are only worse. Remember these guys are effectively POW's by international law, but it's not the Saudi's we are at war with so to where is he returned? If the Saudi's don't want him and the place he was picked up doesn't want him what do you do?
To answer, lets read the article...
He has permission to live in the UK indefinitely because his wife is a British national. They have four children and live in London.
Mr Aamer's case was raised by Prime Minister David Cameron in talks with US President Barack Obama at the G8 summit in June. [2013]
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Mr Aamer's case remains a high priority for the UK government and we continue to make clear to the US that we want him released and returned to the UK as a matter of urgency."
He said the case had been raised with both Mr Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden, adding: "We are confident the US government understands the seriousness of the UK's request for Mr Aamer's release.
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When one bothers to actually look at the data, the rank for the United States is still higher than its ranking in 2006, 2007 and 2011. Since 2002, the United States press freedom has bounced back and forth between the 20s and 50s. This is not to say that there isn't merit to the deficits in press freedom that Reporters Without Borders points out; there are very legitimate concerns being raised about recent efforts by the current administration to crack down on leakers and whistleblowers. Yet because Reporters Without Borders is regularly changing their methodology, you can't really use the data to make a true comparison of any nation's change in rank beyond very broad generalizations. Here's a good story in the Washington Post that makes this point.