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

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/26/2315249/us-plummets-on-world-press-freedom-ranking

by gasull • 14 years ago

92 41 14 years ago

yro.slashdot.org

mohene13• 14 years ago

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

vacri3• 14 years 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.

mohene13• 14 years 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"

hristov• 14 years 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.

jquery2• 14 years 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.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years 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-o...

mohene13• 14 years ago

I was just trying to make the point, restrictions of the press are usually in response to reporting on the crackdown of protesters as was even stated in the article itself. For this I am losing a karma point every 15 minutes

I only commented on the ranking methodology. As for politics. We have 120 different countries on here with differing experiences; I'm not touching that issue on this thread

tripzilch4• 14 years 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.

Duff4• 14 years 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.

sounddust2• 14 years 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.

Duff4• 14 years 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.

Zigurd• 14 years 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

jquery2• 14 years 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.

tripzilch4• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

I actually find the discussion on Slashdot of much higher quality than this one.

Duff4• 14 years ago

There is a broader audience on Slashdot.

Zakharov4• 14 years 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.

burgerbrain3• 14 years ago

How many reporters were beaten in Hungary?

Really no need to pass laws restricting reporters when you can just hit them instead.

Zakharov4• 14 years 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.

InclinedPlane• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Flagged. Please keep things like this on reddit.

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

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