6 ms·

US plummets on World Press Freedom Index, from 27th to 47th

92 points by gasull 15y ago

mohene1 15y ago
The key seems to be, in order to be high on the list do not have protests and uprisings in your country.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - Zirro 15y ago
    You are allowed to express your opinion. Your comment is still here. People dislike it (to the point of considering it trolling, it would seem) and downvote you, though.
    - jquery 15y ago
      Eh, his comment was fine. I think too many people have access to the downvote button again. PG should raise the threshold to 1000 karma.
- vacri 15y ago
  Australia has very little in the way of protests and the only uprising we had was 150 years ago... a mere thirty died. Yet we've slumped to 30th in the ranking. Besides, Papua New Guinea has armed separatists, plus Port Moresby is one of the murder capitals of the world, yet it's 10 positions higher than the US.
  - mohene1 15y ago
    Why is Australia ranked low for press freedomthen? The only controversial thing I can thing of in Australia is the mining industry. Do you all have protesters against the mining industry...thinking of Midnight Oil's "Blue Sky Mine"
    - Zakharov 15y ago
      "In Australia (30th), the media were subjected to investigations and criticism by the authorities, and were denied access to information" according to the article. Personally, I don't see why the authorities have any less right to criticize the media than media have to criticize authorities. I don't think the mining industry has anything to do with it.
    - vacri 15y ago
      The public has done a bizarre about-turn on the mining tax. When it was introduced, the frothing middle-Australians were saying "How dare you bring down those who have brought prosperity to our nation!?". In the intervening years it's become apparent that those mining profits are largely going to overseas owners, yet still screw up the rest of our economy ("two-speed economy" - the rest of the economy is growing, but the mining makes our dollar grow faster yet...). Now middle Australia is whining that the gummint didn't tax those greedy miners enough, they're screwing us over and we aren't getting our cut. One of those times you actually feel sorry for the politicians. That's off-topic though - the mining tax has left public discourse in the last year, but there's lots of noise about internet content filtering, plus according to the page about Australia on the press freedom index, there's lots of obsfucation at the government level when it comes to requests for information. There's not much in the way of protesting, but there were things like reporters working on the wikileaks story having their work blocked.
- hristov 15y ago
  Or you can have protests but not use force against them. Or more specifically do not use force against the journalists. Of course one goes with the other, if you want to beat up some peaceful protesters you have to beat up the journalists covering your original beating too. The occupy protests were peaceful and they generally did not break shops and vandalize things. There was no reason to treat them that way.
  - jquery 15y ago
    I'm sorry, the Occupy protests have NOT been peaceful. Just last week in SF, a couple police officers ended up in the hospital. Nevermind the amount of property they managed to trash. They were also lucky they didn't kill anyone, they were throwing bricks and objects off an abandoned hotel near where I live.
    - Symmetry 15y ago
      Upvoted (back to 1) for being able to give an example, but though there have been a few violent incidents associated with Occupy, for the most part they've been remarkably restrained - more so than I would have guessed. To the extent that police violence is justified by what Occupiers do we should ignore it[1], but was a single one of those 25 incidents of violence against reporters justified? Certainly few if any. [1] e.g. if you surround a group of police and tell them you aren't going to let them leave until they release their prisoners, I'm not going to cry over you getting tear-gassed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y
    - tripzilch 15y ago
      Link?
  - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
    Occupiers in Seattle and Oakland have broken into homes. There is also a post by a Seattle Occupy organiser who boasts about running around disrupting traffic: "Get the music blaring and then march aimlessly, blocking traffic the whole way, for hours" * I support the NYC Occupiers (I live in NYC) because they voice their cause while trying to minimize collateral disruption. If the NYC Occupiers were causing random destruction I would find it difficult to continue empathising. The police should be gentler in their force escalation by issuing plenty of warnings and then gently arresting for short detainment (as a cool-down). But as another comment mentions, sometimes their hands are forced, e.g. SF and Seattle protesters hurling bricks. I would prefer an early crackdown than let the dynamic spiral beyond legitimacy as it did in London. Temporary fix to the press problem may be the press wearing clearly identifying clothing. That dampens the police's excuse that they blend in with the hooligans (every protest, regardless of how legitimate, will attract its unfair share of these). *http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-outsmarts-police-creating-blueprint-for-other-occupations/ http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-o...
- tripzilch 15y ago
  Of course you're allowed to your opinion. It's just that people tend to downvote the really unintelligent ones that don't actually add to the discussion a lot. I'm sure that if you'd have given arguments for your statement instead of wording it as a brainless and inflammatory one-liner, people might have given you the same courtesy instead of immediately reaching for the downvote button. And in my opinion, that's a good thing. When there are no arguments, not even a statement of what exactly your point is, inviting discussion and what you say happens to be exceptionally uninformed and moronic, then yes, have at it with the downvotes because I don't need to read it. If the opinion would have any value whatsoever, somebody else is going to make it in an informed manner and back it with arguments. > The key seems to be, in order to be high on the list do not have protests and uprisings in your country. FWIW: Let's assume, for the sake of argument you intended to say "violent protests" (regardless which side to blame for the violence, gov or protestors) as otherwise your statement is simply factually incorrect and any discussion may as well end here. Assuming that, you're (deliberately?) confusing cause and effect: Being high on the list gives rise to less (violent) protests and uprisings in your country. And suddenly, given that people value freedom as one of the highest things, and will go through great lengths to achieve it, that makes perfect sense.
Duff 15y ago
This is a stunt that does more to take away from the legitmacy of Reporters Without Borders than anything else. If they dropped the US's press freemdom ranking because of the cozy relationships between government officials and mainstream media, or the manipulative behavior of the government towards the press, or any of a dozen other factors, I'd be interested. But they didn't -- instead, they made some vague remark about the oppression of the occupy people. The occupy movement is a joke that is either imploding or getting hijacked by the local activist union movements.
- sounddust 15y ago
  The report states that there were over 25 instances in a two-month period in which journalists in the US were beaten and/or arrested while on the job, with charges such as "public nuisance." That seems pretty clear to me, and consistent with their reasoning for ranking other countries.
  - Duff 15y ago
    Are you referring to bona-fide journalists, or the advocates with cameraphones? I got stuck in the middle of our local occupy grop as they broke up and did a spontaneous march through rush hour traffic when I was walking to the bus. The newspaper and other reporters were clearly distinguishable from the mob, but there were plenty of wannabe "journalists" broadcasting from cameraphones. Those folks were more like PR flacks than journalists. I saw similar stuff in NYC as well. I'm speaking from the perspective of my experience. If cops somewhere else are cracking the heads of reporters (vs. participants), I'm not aware of it.
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
      """Are you referring to bona-fide journalists, or the advocates with cameraphones?""" In a free country, should it matter?
    - sounddust 15y ago
      I don't know who they were referring to in the report, although you could probably contact them to inquire about the specifics. But just by quickly searching Google I found quite a few instances in which real reporters were harmed or arrested: A WNYW Fox photographer (Roy Isen) was maced/attacked with a baton, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photographer (Kristyna Wentz-Graff) was arrested despite her credentials hanging from her neck, an RT television reporter (Lucy Kafanov) was struck with a baton, a journalist in TN (Jonathan Meador) was arrested. John Farley (a reporter for WNET in NY) was arrested. That's just from 5 minutes of searching, so it wouldn't surprise me if the 25 figure only represented professionals.
Zigurd 15y ago
The first two top-level comments I see here amount to: a) Beating bloggers, especially hippies, doesn't count b) If we had only prevented the protests, we'd be doing better Still more reasons America is in a slump in these rankings
- jquery 15y ago
  Explaining why the methodology used by the "press freedom index" is solid instead of making ad-hominem attacks would go a lot further in winning people over.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    > Explaining why the methodology used by the "press freedom index" is solid instead of making ad-hominem attacks would go a lot further in winning people over. Why, do you find its methodology hard to understand? I'll keep that in mind when evaluating the merit of your comments elsewhere in this thread ... "does not actually understand the methodology used in the article". Talk about quality of discussion, indeed!
- steadicat 15y ago
  I actually find the discussion on Slashdot of much higher quality than this one.
  - Duff 15y ago
    There is a broader audience on Slashdot.
Zakharov 15y ago
This strikes me as a bit odd: "Hungary fell 17 rungs to 40th place after adopting a law giving the ruling party direct control over the media and amending its constitution in December." "In the space of two months in the United States, more than 25 were subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police" reducing the US to 47th place.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  How many reporters were beaten in Hungary? Really no need to pass laws restricting reporters when you can just hit them instead.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      I asked how many... Anyway, compare these: http://en.rsf.org/report-hungary,108.html http://en.rsf.org/report-hungary,108.html http://en.rsf.org/report-united-states,176.html http://en.rsf.org/report-united-states,176.html The report lists 25 reporters as having been beaten or arrested in 2011. It does not list any beatings or arrests in Hungary during the same time period. Neither are good, however the comparative scores seem just about right to me.
  - Zakharov 15y ago
    Obviously, restricting press freedom with laws and with beatings are both bad. However, I don't think 25 beatings in a country as large as the U.S. constitutes a systematic or widespread attack on press freedom.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      The thought that it's not systematic disturbs me even more.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
InclinedPlane 15y ago
I did not personally agree with the political goals of the occupy protests. Moreover, many of those protests were marred by violence from protesters or from folks just finding an opportunity for mayhem. However, none of that excuses the very real abuses of power by police that occurred. Non-violent protesters were beaten and arrested. Reporters were harassed, abused, and prevented from covering events by police. Many mainstream reporters simply agreed to comply with police requests to stay out of an area and avoid covering the protests and arrests. I am ashamed for my country in the way these protests evolved and in the police and critical response to them. Tribalism is still alive and well in this country, the response one has to abuse of power and the support one has for legal protections of individual liberty should have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not one shares a cultural or social bond with the victim. I have a feeling that if the ACLU attempted to defend the free speech rights of neo-NAZIs today they would receive even less public support than they did 4 decades ago.
neilk 15y ago
It should be noted that they changed their algorithm this year. They are giving more weight to good actions. So this change in ranking is partially due to good countries getting more credit for stuff they were already doing, as well as new bad actions in the USA. Nothing to feel proud about as this probably means the USA would have ranked pretty low anyway in 2010, were it calculated by 2011 standards.
tkahn6 15y ago
Flagged. Please keep things like this on reddit.

92 points by gasull 15y ago

mohene1 15y ago

The key seems to be, in order to be high on the list do not have protests and uprisings in your country.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- Zirro 15y ago
  You are allowed to express your opinion. Your comment is still here. People dislike it (to the point of considering it trolling, it would seem) and downvote you, though.
  - jquery 15y ago
    Eh, his comment was fine. I think too many people have access to the downvote button again. PG should raise the threshold to 1000 karma.
vacri 15y ago
Australia has very little in the way of protests and the only uprising we had was 150 years ago... a mere thirty died. Yet we've slumped to 30th in the ranking. Besides, Papua New Guinea has armed separatists, plus Port Moresby is one of the murder capitals of the world, yet it's 10 positions higher than the US.
- mohene1 15y ago
  Why is Australia ranked low for press freedomthen? The only controversial thing I can thing of in Australia is the mining industry. Do you all have protesters against the mining industry...thinking of Midnight Oil's "Blue Sky Mine"
  - Zakharov 15y ago
    "In Australia (30th), the media were subjected to investigations and criticism by the authorities, and were denied access to information" according to the article. Personally, I don't see why the authorities have any less right to criticize the media than media have to criticize authorities. I don't think the mining industry has anything to do with it.
  - vacri 15y ago
    The public has done a bizarre about-turn on the mining tax. When it was introduced, the frothing middle-Australians were saying "How dare you bring down those who have brought prosperity to our nation!?". In the intervening years it's become apparent that those mining profits are largely going to overseas owners, yet still screw up the rest of our economy ("two-speed economy" - the rest of the economy is growing, but the mining makes our dollar grow faster yet...). Now middle Australia is whining that the gummint didn't tax those greedy miners enough, they're screwing us over and we aren't getting our cut. One of those times you actually feel sorry for the politicians. That's off-topic though - the mining tax has left public discourse in the last year, but there's lots of noise about internet content filtering, plus according to the page about Australia on the press freedom index, there's lots of obsfucation at the government level when it comes to requests for information. There's not much in the way of protesting, but there were things like reporters working on the wikileaks story having their work blocked.
hristov 15y ago
Or you can have protests but not use force against them. Or more specifically do not use force against the journalists. Of course one goes with the other, if you want to beat up some peaceful protesters you have to beat up the journalists covering your original beating too. The occupy protests were peaceful and they generally did not break shops and vandalize things. There was no reason to treat them that way.
- jquery 15y ago
  I'm sorry, the Occupy protests have NOT been peaceful. Just last week in SF, a couple police officers ended up in the hospital. Nevermind the amount of property they managed to trash. They were also lucky they didn't kill anyone, they were throwing bricks and objects off an abandoned hotel near where I live.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    Upvoted (back to 1) for being able to give an example, but though there have been a few violent incidents associated with Occupy, for the most part they've been remarkably restrained - more so than I would have guessed. To the extent that police violence is justified by what Occupiers do we should ignore it[1], but was a single one of those 25 incidents of violence against reporters justified? Certainly few if any. [1] e.g. if you surround a group of police and tell them you aren't going to let them leave until they release their prisoners, I'm not going to cry over you getting tear-gassed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    Link?
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  Occupiers in Seattle and Oakland have broken into homes. There is also a post by a Seattle Occupy organiser who boasts about running around disrupting traffic: "Get the music blaring and then march aimlessly, blocking traffic the whole way, for hours" * I support the NYC Occupiers (I live in NYC) because they voice their cause while trying to minimize collateral disruption. If the NYC Occupiers were causing random destruction I would find it difficult to continue empathising. The police should be gentler in their force escalation by issuing plenty of warnings and then gently arresting for short detainment (as a cool-down). But as another comment mentions, sometimes their hands are forced, e.g. SF and Seattle protesters hurling bricks. I would prefer an early crackdown than let the dynamic spiral beyond legitimacy as it did in London. Temporary fix to the press problem may be the press wearing clearly identifying clothing. That dampens the police's excuse that they blend in with the hooligans (every protest, regardless of how legitimate, will attract its unfair share of these). *http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-outsmarts-police-creating-blueprint-for-other-occupations/ http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-o...
tripzilch 15y ago
Of course you're allowed to your opinion. It's just that people tend to downvote the really unintelligent ones that don't actually add to the discussion a lot. I'm sure that if you'd have given arguments for your statement instead of wording it as a brainless and inflammatory one-liner, people might have given you the same courtesy instead of immediately reaching for the downvote button. And in my opinion, that's a good thing. When there are no arguments, not even a statement of what exactly your point is, inviting discussion and what you say happens to be exceptionally uninformed and moronic, then yes, have at it with the downvotes because I don't need to read it. If the opinion would have any value whatsoever, somebody else is going to make it in an informed manner and back it with arguments. > The key seems to be, in order to be high on the list do not have protests and uprisings in your country. FWIW: Let's assume, for the sake of argument you intended to say "violent protests" (regardless which side to blame for the violence, gov or protestors) as otherwise your statement is simply factually incorrect and any discussion may as well end here. Assuming that, you're (deliberately?) confusing cause and effect: Being high on the list gives rise to less (violent) protests and uprisings in your country. And suddenly, given that people value freedom as one of the highest things, and will go through great lengths to achieve it, that makes perfect sense.

Duff 15y ago

This is a stunt that does more to take away from the legitmacy of Reporters Without Borders than anything else. If they dropped the US's press freemdom ranking because of the cozy relationships between government officials and mainstream media, or the manipulative behavior of the government towards the press, or any of a dozen other factors, I'd be interested. But they didn't -- instead, they made some vague remark about the oppression of the occupy people. The occupy movement is a joke that is either imploding or getting hijacked by the local activist union movements.

sounddust 15y ago
The report states that there were over 25 instances in a two-month period in which journalists in the US were beaten and/or arrested while on the job, with charges such as "public nuisance." That seems pretty clear to me, and consistent with their reasoning for ranking other countries.
- Duff 15y ago
  Are you referring to bona-fide journalists, or the advocates with cameraphones? I got stuck in the middle of our local occupy grop as they broke up and did a spontaneous march through rush hour traffic when I was walking to the bus. The newspaper and other reporters were clearly distinguishable from the mob, but there were plenty of wannabe "journalists" broadcasting from cameraphones. Those folks were more like PR flacks than journalists. I saw similar stuff in NYC as well. I'm speaking from the perspective of my experience. If cops somewhere else are cracking the heads of reporters (vs. participants), I'm not aware of it.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    """Are you referring to bona-fide journalists, or the advocates with cameraphones?""" In a free country, should it matter?
  - sounddust 15y ago
    I don't know who they were referring to in the report, although you could probably contact them to inquire about the specifics. But just by quickly searching Google I found quite a few instances in which real reporters were harmed or arrested: A WNYW Fox photographer (Roy Isen) was maced/attacked with a baton, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photographer (Kristyna Wentz-Graff) was arrested despite her credentials hanging from her neck, an RT television reporter (Lucy Kafanov) was struck with a baton, a journalist in TN (Jonathan Meador) was arrested. John Farley (a reporter for WNET in NY) was arrested. That's just from 5 minutes of searching, so it wouldn't surprise me if the 25 figure only represented professionals.

Zigurd 15y ago

The first two top-level comments I see here amount to: a) Beating bloggers, especially hippies, doesn't count b) If we had only prevented the protests, we'd be doing better Still more reasons America is in a slump in these rankings

jquery 15y ago
Explaining why the methodology used by the "press freedom index" is solid instead of making ad-hominem attacks would go a lot further in winning people over.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- tripzilch 15y ago
  > Explaining why the methodology used by the "press freedom index" is solid instead of making ad-hominem attacks would go a lot further in winning people over. Why, do you find its methodology hard to understand? I'll keep that in mind when evaluating the merit of your comments elsewhere in this thread ... "does not actually understand the methodology used in the article". Talk about quality of discussion, indeed!
steadicat 15y ago
I actually find the discussion on Slashdot of much higher quality than this one.
- Duff 15y ago
  There is a broader audience on Slashdot.

Zakharov 15y ago

This strikes me as a bit odd: "Hungary fell 17 rungs to 40th place after adopting a law giving the ruling party direct control over the media and amending its constitution in December." "In the space of two months in the United States, more than 25 were subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police" reducing the US to 47th place.

burgerbrain 15y ago
How many reporters were beaten in Hungary? Really no need to pass laws restricting reporters when you can just hit them instead.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    I asked how many... Anyway, compare these: http://en.rsf.org/report-hungary,108.html http://en.rsf.org/report-hungary,108.html http://en.rsf.org/report-united-states,176.html http://en.rsf.org/report-united-states,176.html The report lists 25 reporters as having been beaten or arrested in 2011. It does not list any beatings or arrests in Hungary during the same time period. Neither are good, however the comparative scores seem just about right to me.
- Zakharov 15y ago
  Obviously, restricting press freedom with laws and with beatings are both bad. However, I don't think 25 beatings in a country as large as the U.S. constitutes a systematic or widespread attack on press freedom.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    The thought that it's not systematic disturbs me even more.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

InclinedPlane 15y ago

I did not personally agree with the political goals of the occupy protests. Moreover, many of those protests were marred by violence from protesters or from folks just finding an opportunity for mayhem. However, none of that excuses the very real abuses of power by police that occurred. Non-violent protesters were beaten and arrested. Reporters were harassed, abused, and prevented from covering events by police. Many mainstream reporters simply agreed to comply with police requests to stay out of an area and avoid covering the protests and arrests. I am ashamed for my country in the way these protests evolved and in the police and critical response to them. Tribalism is still alive and well in this country, the response one has to abuse of power and the support one has for legal protections of individual liberty should have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not one shares a cultural or social bond with the victim. I have a feeling that if the ACLU attempted to defend the free speech rights of neo-NAZIs today they would receive even less public support than they did 4 decades ago.

neilk 15y ago

It should be noted that they changed their algorithm this year. They are giving more weight to good actions. So this change in ranking is partially due to good countries getting more credit for stuff they were already doing, as well as new bad actions in the USA. Nothing to feel proud about as this probably means the USA would have ranked pretty low anyway in 2010, were it calculated by 2011 standards.

tkahn6 15y ago

Flagged. Please keep things like this on reddit.