jobsanger: U.S. - Only 46 Countries Have A Freer Press

Monday, July 23, 2012

U.S. - Only 46 Countries Have A Freer Press

Reporters Without Borders has been issuing a report for the last 10 years that ranks countries on how free their press is, and they have just put out their latest appraisal. It ranks the press freedom of 179 countries. Here is part of the statement they released with the report:

“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world. Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.

“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.

“It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.

“This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom. It is worth noting the entry of Cape Verde and Namibia into the top twenty, two African countries where no attempts to obstruct the media were reported in 2011."

I'm sure most Americans think the United States is somewhere near the top of these free press rankings. After all, don't we pride ourselves on have a free and unfettered press? But if that's what you think, then you are sadly mistaken. The United States ranks a pitiful 47th among the world's countries in press freedom -- tied with Rumania and Argentina. And that's certainly nothing to be proud of.

Why is the United States so far down the list? Well, they slid further down the list this year because of the beatings and arrests of reporters by police -- especially reporters trying to cover the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that swept across the country last year. The beatings and arrests were uncalled for and just go to point out that the police, in too many instances, are a tool of corporations and the rich -- and protecting the power structure is deemed more important than protecting the general public.

This should not come as any surprise to us. Nearly all news outlets in this country are owned and controlled by a handful of corporations, and the only "news" that gets reported anymore is what the corporations want Americans to see. For news that's not corporate-approved, you have to search the internet (and that's why we must jealously guard internet freedom, because it's all we really have left -- and the corporations and governments would love to bring it under their control). Here are the ranking of the top 51 countries in press freedom:

1. Finland, Norway

3. Estonia, Netherlands

5. Austria

6. Iceland, Luxembourg

8. Switzerland

9. Cape Verde

10. Canada, Denmark

12. Sweden

13. New Zealand

14. Czech Republic

15. Ireland

16. Cyprus, Jamaica, Germany