how free is the press where you live?

[miriam_e]

Reporters Without Borders has compiled a list of 168 countries and organised them according to how free the press is in those places.
See the list at: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639

Most free are northern European countries Finland, Iceland, Ireland, and Netherlands which all have equally extremely free and open media. The Czech Republic is very close.

The UK is slipping badly, having dropped to tie with Lithuania for 27th position.

Australia is not doing very well at 35th position along with Bulgaria, France, and Mali.

Israel has nothing to be proud of at 50th.

Japan does far less well than I would have thought, at 51st.

Mainland USA is appalling at 53rd position, same as Botswana, Croatia, and Tonga, while extra-territorial USA is tragically at 119th.

Mexico is at 132nd, just above Egypt at 133rd.

Saudi Arabia -- the great middle east ally of the West is at the terrible 161st position.

North Korea is worst of all, at 168th.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Australia is not doing very well at 35th position along with Bulgaria, France, and Mali.

That's Australia as a whole, says the man from a one-newspaper town.
If I got pay TV of any stripe, I'd be getting Al Jazeera.

I have to ask if those rankings take account of the net, because these days I get my news from the ABC online, BBC, google news, LJ and various filter sites...

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Maybe it means you should be looking for your news from Finnish, Icelandic, Irish, Dutch, or Czech feeds.

You know... it got me thinking. All around the world people have been ceasing to buy newspapers in their droves. Commercial radio is losing its audience in a big way, and TV's news/current affairs audience is drying up. Each of those organisations seems totally mystified as to why that is happening. It seems obvious to me: people are sick and tired of being lied to by sensationalist, fear-inspiring propagandists. I wonder if the press is suffering the same way in those countries with the most press freedom. I just betcha it isn't.

[sharpblonde.livejournal.com]

Canada is tied at 16th... not bad. Surprised Australia is so much lower on the list.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Don't know how I forgot to look at Canada's rank. It is, from what I've heard, one of the best places in the world to live. With a score of 4.5 on the list, though, it still isn't great when compared against the top countries which scored 0.5. Australia, with a score of 9 is shameful, and USA at 13 is pitiful for a country that is supposed to be all about freedom. Though I guess we're all not too badly off when you consider Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka which score about 50 or the bottom nine countries who each score 160 and worse.

I also forgot to look at New Zealand, which is tied with three others (scored 5) at next spot below Canada. New Zealand is the most beautiful country I've ever seen, though the society is being shredded by the right-wing economic "rationalists".

[xxclovergrrlxx.livejournal.com]

the american people are incredibly stupid and sell their rights out of fear. recent elections showed that much of america is sick of bush and his republican regime so one can only hope that things will start to get better after the next election.

[sharpblonde.livejournal.com]

What exactly do the scorings mean? Maybe it's just because I was only skimming the actual article, but I did not see that anywhere.

And living in Canada I'm not exactly surprised about the U.S. rating. My Mom was born in the U.S. so we watch as much American news as Canadian. It's pretty obvious the press isn't as free as Canada's there. A lot of their rights to freedom have been much restricted since 9/11 and subsequent terrorist scares. The States is more aggressively active on an international front then Canada which, I believe, is why the get so many terrorists annoyed with them. The "War on Terror" has only exacerbated this.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I sorta think the people of USA are not much different from people everywhere. I'd love to know why northern European places are traditionally so tolerant and free with such high standards of living.

It is such a relief that Bush is getting his just desserts.

I'm delighted to see that serious work has begun on a trial of Rumsfeld as a war criminal. Let's hope Bush and some more of his cronies get included in that along with the nasty little Australian prime minister and UK's Blair. We need to stop people thinking it is OK to declare war on any old excuse if we are to survive the next several decades.

[(Anonymous)]

Just looked at the main article so far ... It's a cumulative score from answers to 50 questions & of course subjectively assessed by the journos in that country. Much better indicator than asking the man in the street - or even in private. The least free countries would probably rate the best; because people either believed what they were consistently told, or were too scared to not pretend they did. (Mid 20th century Japan was a well known example after decades of controlled media, and now I would still suspect they have much less freedom in practice - perhaps because the media don't test their freedom very much). I doubt if Japan has more diversity of views in the MASS media than the USA, although there was a high membership of communist party. Criticizing Japan's wwII record risks a response from the Yakuza, - I'd rather upset the KKK, John Birch, Skull & Bones & the Bittberger group.
Note also how quickly ratings change when freedom is more tested - as in Denmark with the cartoons. Perhaps in the Netherlands, the country may have been downgraded because of Pim Fortuyn, & now further because some of the people he intolerated were even less tolerant of him & Theo van Gogh.

Correction to previous post

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't mean Japan has less freedom now than decades ago, I meant less free media than even eg. USA mainland.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

This 50 point questionaire (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19390) is asked of the 14 freedom of expression organisations that are Reporters Without Borders' partners worldwide, its network of 130 correspondents, as well as journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists, to answer 50 questions about press freedom in their countries. I'm not sure how they calculated the final numbers, but it looks rather like they added up the responses and divided by 50.

I've always been very skeptical of terrorists as a reason for the freedom crackdowns and scary news. Terrorists kill about 600 people worldwide each year, and as those are the US administration's figures the numbers are probably a good deal lower than that. But each year:
- cars kill 1.2 million,
- AIDS kills more than 3 million,
- smoking kills about 5 million,
- starvation kills more than 16 million
Meanwhile the world's weapons budget is approaching a trillion dollars (about half of which is spent by USA). We could feed, clothe, house, and educate those 16 million for a whole year (at a dollar a day) by redirecting the weapon expenditure for just 10 minutes (or the USA weapons funding for 20 minutes). This would also probably have the nice side-effect of fixing most of the terrorist problem.

The USA and old soviet countries still have thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at each other. All we need is a small error and kablooey! End of civilisation. About 10 are all that are needed to utterly cripple USA. Ditto the ex-USSR. So what are all the couple of thousand for? They're not even at war anymore, for heaven's sake. If anybody is worried about weapons of mass destruction that is what we should be worried about -- not some dupe blowing himself up with a bomb on his chest and taking a dozen innocents with him.

The war machine is still poised to take everybody with them. I believe they are the greatest threat to human survival past the next several decades.

Wow. That was some rant. :)
Sorry.

Re: Correction to previous post

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yes. It would be a difficult thing to assess. The questionaire seems like a good way to do it, even with its shortcomings, as you noted. I must admit didn't think of the effect of limits being tested or not. I guess the tendency to self-censor means that the press may well be less free than it appears, even when it gets a good score.

Re: Correction to previous post

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Perhaps rather than being an index of "freedom of the press" it should be seen as a measure of persecution of the press.

[xxclovergrrlxx.livejournal.com]

wouldn't that be nice...