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2020 World Press Freedom Index: A decisive decade for the future of journalism

kaliali 6y ago
Look at that. Why isn't this USA number 1 in press freedom? Hell I'm surprised it's even that high with witch hunting going on in this cult following country. The only journalists that matter like Snowden and Assange do get fucked over, the rest don't matter they're a bunch of sniveling lying rats.
gtsop 6y ago
Ha! What a scam. Greece in the blue zone? Oh boy, I really want to see the full dataset of this "report". The journalist scandals and corruption in mainstream media in Greece has gone through the roof. If these "analysts" put it at the blue zone I can't imagine what's the situation at the yellow zones. Edit: I know it's teal, by saying blue I meant the lower-end zone, doesn't change my point
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  Well comparatively there are a lot of places in the world were journalists are murdered so I guess context matters.
  - gtsop 6y ago
    I would agree with your point but there is a problem on the scale. The scale starts from 0 and goes to 100. It is thus imperative that when you see a country near the 0 zone you think "Ah! Things are good there!". So the visualization is missleading, that' why I said I want to see the dataset. I don't want to see it in relative score, but in absolute score. If every country on earth is on the red zone, then paint it all red.
- nkozyra 6y ago
  Well what does that have to do with journalistic freedom, which is what this list aims to measure? This is about how states treat the media, not how the media independently behaves.
  - gtsop 6y ago
    Greece's government paid millions of euros to the mainstream media so that they allign with the government's narative on how the pandemic is being handled. They also give out non-papers to prevent media from saying bad things about the president. The police recently heavily restricted the freedom of journalists covering demonstrations. Is it clear now? That's just the tip
    - nkozyra 6y ago
      I think that's very different than what they're attempting to capture here. Bribery is a little different than coercion by force. Bribery is something even the freest of institute is susceptible. Edit: it very explicitly defines this in the article. Media's ability to provide unbiased journalism independent to the state is not a metric. Indeed in a relatively free US there is terrible journalism everywhere you look. It's just not under the thumb of the state.
      - gtsop 6y ago
        I don't think your argument is very valid based on what they say their metrics are. Listing the relevant ones: Pluralism, Media independence, Legislative framework, Transparency. These are the metrics relevant to the examples I gave earlier. I don't think the score is fair. I did a bit of diging on their website and there is some coverage on many of the examples I listed, which surprises me. It may truly be a visualization issue
        nkozyra 6y ago
        I think you're misinterpreting those metrics, though. This is entirely about the states ability to suppress freedom. Are there more examples you left out? Because freedom does not preclude the susceptibility to bribery.
        bondarchuk 6y ago
        https://rsf.org/en/detailed-methodology https://rsf.org/en/detailed-methodology >The criteria evaluated in the questionnaire are pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information. Bribery clearly falls into "media independence", perhaps also "self-censorship" (censor yourself to get free money). Their description of media independence: >Measures the degree to which the media are able to function independently of sources of political, governmental, business and religious power and influence. Again I think bribery and other soft/financial coercion should clearly be included here.
- pmontra 6y ago
  Bribery is on the same axis as honesty, not freedom. It would be a metric in the World Press Honesty Index. There are countries where the government doesn't even have to bribe press to make journalists write and say what the regime wants.
secfirstmd 6y ago
I'd go direct to the source for this one. Kinda helps explain more of the reasoning about it. https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking At Security First (https://www.secfirst.org https://www.secfirst.org), we build an open source mobile app for journalists and activists to learn about digital and physical security topics ranging from phishing to kidnap. We also do training for journalists and activists all over the world. At present we suspect that 2021 is trending towards being one of the worst years on record unfortunately. Myanmar for example has proven to be a disaster. For those looking at such things. It's always worth considering the wider civil society also. For example, Attacks on human rights defenders: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/ https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/ Attacks on aid workers: https://aidworkersecurity.org/incidents/report https://aidworkersecurity.org/incidents/report Attacks on environmental Defenders: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-act... Often for example we may be doing an analysis of risk in a country and while there may not be currently some on journalists, there may be some on human rights defenders so that may frame how we view things. Let's say we know NSO Group is used in the country against activists or that local intelligence puts civil society members under physical surveillance. Of course risks tend to be quite different. For example journalists more likely to be arrested or intimidated, aid workers more likely to be kidnapped etc. There is also a lot of under reporting. This is because of the nature of each sort of position. For example environmental defenders tend to be more local, say someone defending their land in the Amazon, compared to a journalist. So those attacks are often harder to record. Also, people sometimes may wear multiple hats. So an LGBTIQ+ activist in Russia might also be a blogger. It might be difficult to figure out exactly why some threat to their safety occured.
- iso1210 6y ago
  You expect China and Myanmar to attack journalists, but we've seen journalists arrested live on TV in the USA [0], we've seen police attacking journalists in the UK [1], and we've seen attacks on journalists encouraged by so called "leaders of the free world" [2][3] It feels to me that things have massively regressed in the last 10 years ago and we're in a far more dangerous world [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52854980 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52854980 [1] https://twitter.com/MatthewDresch/status/1375606889740898305?s=20 https://twitter.com/MatthewDresch/status/1375606889740898305... [2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/16/report-trumps-attacks-press-dangerously-undermined-truth/5150134002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/16/repor... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/23/vilifying-journalists-government-jacob-rees-mogg-huffpost https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/23/vilify...
zarkov99 6y ago
I see so much self-regard from journalists, so much concern about their own safety, their freedom, their economical well being, the competitive threats they feel from substack. I have yet to see a single article from any main stream journalist accept a shred of responsibility for their part in eroding public trust and inciting division and hatred. It is as of all the people who had integrity or any sense of duty left the profession. We live in a sea of mis-information, we desperately need help making sense of the deluge of nonsense coming our way every day and the societal organ responsible for that spends its time contributing to the chaos or flattering itself. As far as I am concerned main stream journalism has sold its sold and it cannot die fast enough.
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India alone. Your "whatabboutism" based on Substack, a tool that few outside the US bubble even know or care about, is really missing the mark here. I've lost count on how many massively complex investigations I've helped journalists work on to expose everything from war crimes to Trump's finances. Sometimes dozens of people working on it at a time, multiple countries, a few different news outlets, skills ranging from investigation to IT, with centuries of experience between everyone involved, over months or years. No way in hell a glorified blog is going to replace that.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. The parent’s point seems to be that the “brave journalist” has become supplanted by the sensationalist masquerading as journalist. No doubt there are some brave journalists or even journalists with integrity, but they’re a dying breed. Additionally your post seems condescending and snarky, which is always inappropriate and all the more so when you’re the one not following the plot.
throw0101a 6y ago
Meanwhile, Wikipedia cannot post the rankings because of possible copyright issues: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index The version that was live as I typed this (Sat Mar 27 12:45:00 UTC 2021): * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Press_Freedom_Index&oldid=1014066633 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Press_Freedom_Ind...
williesleg 6y ago
Fake news at its best. Didn't used to be that way. Just check cnn.com and foxnews.com, are they both reporting from the same planet? Neither is good, they're both polarizing.
doitLP 6y ago
In North America, though nations have historically respected the press, journalists in these countries are being challenged by the very institutions on which they report. Journalists and the media regularly face verbal and physical threats, denied access to information, as laws and lawsuits restricting their rights multiply. Is that it? How about: “journalists in these countries are being challenged by the very institutions they used to be part of, as pluralism plummets, self-censorship rises to heights not seen since the 1950s and tribal ideology becomes more important than objective reporting in a world aswim in misinformation and deliberately encouraged bias”.
pmichaud 6y ago
Just a glance at the map tells me they have zero credibility. My guess is not that they are overtly lying, just juking the stats, devising a test by which “the press” passes but which fails to capture the real heart of the question which is whether the press is a net positive source of information, useful for informing the body politic such that they can make wise long-term decisions. Or not. Or the opposite of that. Anyone not living under a rock can see the trend is moving in the wrong direction, and this bullshit map is not persuasive of anything except maybe that the Reporters Without Borders organization has been subverted by the same incentive landscape that’s twisting and subverting the press as a whole.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  fails to capture the real heart of the question which is whether the press is a net positive source of information That’s not what they set out to measure. You can’t say they’re doing it wrong if you change the goalposts to your preference.
  - pmichaud 6y ago
    I'm well aware of the proxy metrics they chose, and have thought of several ways each could be juked. I'm talking about the heart of the matter which the proxies were selected to measure. You can reasonably dispute my claim about what the heart is or what underlying reality the proxies were selected to measure, but regardless this whole thing is a big Motte and Bailey: I say the proxies are bad and poorly measured for the spirit of the matter, and you (in a broad sense I mean--like anyone inclined to reply like you are), point out that there is no spirit, it's just the metrics themselves and nothing more, and that I can't read more into it than that. That I can't impugn the results for not measuring something it never intended to measure. Fine. But then, also, separately, these results are in fact (I predict, and would bet) going to be used to support broad, "spiritual-style" claims about the health and usefulness of the global press in general, that are misleading and overbroad based on what was actually measured and how. This trick is one of the main problems with the way science and journalism are conducted today. I have heard it termed "Distributed Motte and Bailey."
- 6y ago
villgax 6y ago
Journalists aside, regular citizens in India now are hesitant to even form a collective voice, however widespread the ideals be for fear of being labelled as foreign-backed adversaries.
altgans 6y ago
Stupid question, but on a "Press Freedom Index", I expect 100 to be max freedom, not the other way around. Nope, questions don't need a question mark.
tziki 6y ago
I wonder how (or if) they account for self-cencorship, which has become quite common along with the spread of cancel culture.
cryptica 6y ago
I don't believe all these stats... I'm pretty sure China would have their own version of the 'Press Freedom Index' which shows China as having perfect press freedom and US and Europe having terrible scores. Based on what I can observe with my own eyes and having travelled around the world, I don't think there is much press freedom at all in US or Europe. The only difference is that in China, they suck up to the government but in the west, they suck up to corporations. There are pros and cons to either but I wouldn't say one is better than another.

Look at that. Why isn't this USA number 1 in press freedom? Hell I'm surprised it's even that high with witch hunting going on in this cult following country. The only journalists that matter like Snowden and Assange do get fucked over, the rest don't matter they're a bunch of sniveling lying rats.

gtsop 6y ago

Ha! What a scam. Greece in the blue zone? Oh boy, I really want to see the full dataset of this "report". The journalist scandals and corruption in mainstream media in Greece has gone through the roof. If these "analysts" put it at the blue zone I can't imagine what's the situation at the yellow zones. Edit: I know it's teal, by saying blue I meant the lower-end zone, doesn't change my point

secfirstmd 6y ago
Well comparatively there are a lot of places in the world were journalists are murdered so I guess context matters.
- gtsop 6y ago
  I would agree with your point but there is a problem on the scale. The scale starts from 0 and goes to 100. It is thus imperative that when you see a country near the 0 zone you think "Ah! Things are good there!". So the visualization is missleading, that' why I said I want to see the dataset. I don't want to see it in relative score, but in absolute score. If every country on earth is on the red zone, then paint it all red.
nkozyra 6y ago
Well what does that have to do with journalistic freedom, which is what this list aims to measure? This is about how states treat the media, not how the media independently behaves.
- gtsop 6y ago
  Greece's government paid millions of euros to the mainstream media so that they allign with the government's narative on how the pandemic is being handled. They also give out non-papers to prevent media from saying bad things about the president. The police recently heavily restricted the freedom of journalists covering demonstrations. Is it clear now? That's just the tip
  - nkozyra 6y ago
    I think that's very different than what they're attempting to capture here. Bribery is a little different than coercion by force. Bribery is something even the freest of institute is susceptible. Edit: it very explicitly defines this in the article. Media's ability to provide unbiased journalism independent to the state is not a metric. Indeed in a relatively free US there is terrible journalism everywhere you look. It's just not under the thumb of the state.
    - gtsop 6y ago
      I don't think your argument is very valid based on what they say their metrics are. Listing the relevant ones: Pluralism, Media independence, Legislative framework, Transparency. These are the metrics relevant to the examples I gave earlier. I don't think the score is fair. I did a bit of diging on their website and there is some coverage on many of the examples I listed, which surprises me. It may truly be a visualization issue
      - nkozyra 6y ago
        I think you're misinterpreting those metrics, though. This is entirely about the states ability to suppress freedom. Are there more examples you left out? Because freedom does not preclude the susceptibility to bribery.
        bondarchuk 6y ago
        https://rsf.org/en/detailed-methodology https://rsf.org/en/detailed-methodology >The criteria evaluated in the questionnaire are pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information. Bribery clearly falls into "media independence", perhaps also "self-censorship" (censor yourself to get free money). Their description of media independence: >Measures the degree to which the media are able to function independently of sources of political, governmental, business and religious power and influence. Again I think bribery and other soft/financial coercion should clearly be included here.
pmontra 6y ago
Bribery is on the same axis as honesty, not freedom. It would be a metric in the World Press Honesty Index. There are countries where the government doesn't even have to bribe press to make journalists write and say what the regime wants.

secfirstmd 6y ago

I'd go direct to the source for this one. Kinda helps explain more of the reasoning about it. https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking At Security First (https://www.secfirst.org https://www.secfirst.org), we build an open source mobile app for journalists and activists to learn about digital and physical security topics ranging from phishing to kidnap. We also do training for journalists and activists all over the world. At present we suspect that 2021 is trending towards being one of the worst years on record unfortunately. Myanmar for example has proven to be a disaster. For those looking at such things. It's always worth considering the wider civil society also. For example, Attacks on human rights defenders: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/ https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/ Attacks on aid workers: https://aidworkersecurity.org/incidents/report https://aidworkersecurity.org/incidents/report Attacks on environmental Defenders: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-act... Often for example we may be doing an analysis of risk in a country and while there may not be currently some on journalists, there may be some on human rights defenders so that may frame how we view things. Let's say we know NSO Group is used in the country against activists or that local intelligence puts civil society members under physical surveillance. Of course risks tend to be quite different. For example journalists more likely to be arrested or intimidated, aid workers more likely to be kidnapped etc. There is also a lot of under reporting. This is because of the nature of each sort of position. For example environmental defenders tend to be more local, say someone defending their land in the Amazon, compared to a journalist. So those attacks are often harder to record. Also, people sometimes may wear multiple hats. So an LGBTIQ+ activist in Russia might also be a blogger. It might be difficult to figure out exactly why some threat to their safety occured.

iso1210 6y ago
You expect China and Myanmar to attack journalists, but we've seen journalists arrested live on TV in the USA [0], we've seen police attacking journalists in the UK [1], and we've seen attacks on journalists encouraged by so called "leaders of the free world" [2][3] It feels to me that things have massively regressed in the last 10 years ago and we're in a far more dangerous world [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52854980 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52854980 [1] https://twitter.com/MatthewDresch/status/1375606889740898305?s=20 https://twitter.com/MatthewDresch/status/1375606889740898305... [2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/16/report-trumps-attacks-press-dangerously-undermined-truth/5150134002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/16/repor... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/23/vilifying-journalists-government-jacob-rees-mogg-huffpost https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/23/vilify...

zarkov99 6y ago

I see so much self-regard from journalists, so much concern about their own safety, their freedom, their economical well being, the competitive threats they feel from substack. I have yet to see a single article from any main stream journalist accept a shred of responsibility for their part in eroding public trust and inciting division and hatred. It is as of all the people who had integrity or any sense of duty left the profession. We live in a sea of mis-information, we desperately need help making sense of the deluge of nonsense coming our way every day and the societal organ responsible for that spends its time contributing to the chaos or flattering itself. As far as I am concerned main stream journalism has sold its sold and it cannot die fast enough.

secfirstmd 6y ago
This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India alone. Your "whatabboutism" based on Substack, a tool that few outside the US bubble even know or care about, is really missing the mark here. I've lost count on how many massively complex investigations I've helped journalists work on to expose everything from war crimes to Trump's finances. Sometimes dozens of people working on it at a time, multiple countries, a few different news outlets, skills ranging from investigation to IT, with centuries of experience between everyone involved, over months or years. No way in hell a glorified blog is going to replace that.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. The parent’s point seems to be that the “brave journalist” has become supplanted by the sensationalist masquerading as journalist. No doubt there are some brave journalists or even journalists with integrity, but they’re a dying breed. Additionally your post seems condescending and snarky, which is always inappropriate and all the more so when you’re the one not following the plot.

throw0101a 6y ago

Meanwhile, Wikipedia cannot post the rankings because of possible copyright issues: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index The version that was live as I typed this (Sat Mar 27 12:45:00 UTC 2021): * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Press_Freedom_Index&oldid=1014066633 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Press_Freedom_Ind...

williesleg 6y ago

Fake news at its best. Didn't used to be that way. Just check cnn.com and foxnews.com, are they both reporting from the same planet? Neither is good, they're both polarizing.

doitLP 6y ago

In North America, though nations have historically respected the press, journalists in these countries are being challenged by the very institutions on which they report. Journalists and the media regularly face verbal and physical threats, denied access to information, as laws and lawsuits restricting their rights multiply. Is that it? How about: “journalists in these countries are being challenged by the very institutions they used to be part of, as pluralism plummets, self-censorship rises to heights not seen since the 1950s and tribal ideology becomes more important than objective reporting in a world aswim in misinformation and deliberately encouraged bias”.

pmichaud 6y ago

Just a glance at the map tells me they have zero credibility. My guess is not that they are overtly lying, just juking the stats, devising a test by which “the press” passes but which fails to capture the real heart of the question which is whether the press is a net positive source of information, useful for informing the body politic such that they can make wise long-term decisions. Or not. Or the opposite of that. Anyone not living under a rock can see the trend is moving in the wrong direction, and this bullshit map is not persuasive of anything except maybe that the Reporters Without Borders organization has been subverted by the same incentive landscape that’s twisting and subverting the press as a whole.

WalterGR 6y ago
fails to capture the real heart of the question which is whether the press is a net positive source of information That’s not what they set out to measure. You can’t say they’re doing it wrong if you change the goalposts to your preference.
- pmichaud 6y ago
  I'm well aware of the proxy metrics they chose, and have thought of several ways each could be juked. I'm talking about the heart of the matter which the proxies were selected to measure. You can reasonably dispute my claim about what the heart is or what underlying reality the proxies were selected to measure, but regardless this whole thing is a big Motte and Bailey: I say the proxies are bad and poorly measured for the spirit of the matter, and you (in a broad sense I mean--like anyone inclined to reply like you are), point out that there is no spirit, it's just the metrics themselves and nothing more, and that I can't read more into it than that. That I can't impugn the results for not measuring something it never intended to measure. Fine. But then, also, separately, these results are in fact (I predict, and would bet) going to be used to support broad, "spiritual-style" claims about the health and usefulness of the global press in general, that are misleading and overbroad based on what was actually measured and how. This trick is one of the main problems with the way science and journalism are conducted today. I have heard it termed "Distributed Motte and Bailey."
6y ago

villgax 6y ago

Journalists aside, regular citizens in India now are hesitant to even form a collective voice, however widespread the ideals be for fear of being labelled as foreign-backed adversaries.

altgans 6y ago

Stupid question, but on a "Press Freedom Index", I expect 100 to be max freedom, not the other way around. Nope, questions don't need a question mark.

tziki 6y ago

I wonder how (or if) they account for self-cencorship, which has become quite common along with the spread of cancel culture.

cryptica 6y ago

I don't believe all these stats... I'm pretty sure China would have their own version of the 'Press Freedom Index' which shows China as having perfect press freedom and US and Europe having terrible scores. Based on what I can observe with my own eyes and having travelled around the world, I don't think there is much press freedom at all in US or Europe. The only difference is that in China, they suck up to the government but in the west, they suck up to corporations. There are pros and cons to either but I wouldn't say one is better than another.