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When It Comes to Press Freedom, We're Number 53!

Reporters Sans Frontières recently released its annual ranking of press freedom around the world, and it's not good news for the United States. Our ranking's been steadily dropping since the survey started in 2002, when we were in the index's top 20. Now we're at a dismal 53rd place, down from an undistinguished 44th last year. That puts us in the same league as tiny democracies like Botswana, Croatia, and Tonga. To be sure, we're a long way from the atrocious rankings of Iran, China, Burma, Cuba, and North Korea. But it's nothing to write home about.

The United States' poor showing is largely to blame on the excesses of the war on terror. As RSF explains, "Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism.'" And then there's the journalists we've got locked up, such as a Sudanese Al-Jazeera cameraman being held in Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who's been in U.S. custody in Iraq for 6 months without charge. That's just the official hostility to the press. During the past year, right-wing commentators debated whether the editor of the New York Times should be sent to the gas chamber or the firing squad for revealing a program to track terrorist funds. It's not clear whether this episode figured into RSF's rankings, but it was another sign of why, when it comes to freedom of expression, we've got a long way to Number One.

[Ed. Note: This week's Sports Illustrated carries an excellent column on Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the San Francisco Chronicle reporters who used leaked grand jury testimony to blow the lid off the steroid scandal. They'll be heading to jail soon for failing to reveal their sources, and may still be in the big house when Barry Bonds, documented to have commited several crimes in Fainaru-Wada and Williams' reporting, breaks baseball's all-time home run record.

A detail from the column, which unfortunately is subscription-only: The Chronicle has received 80 subpoenas of reporters over the last 18 months, compared with five over the previous 18. That's the world's strongest democracy, leading by example.]

Comments

Pure smoke screen--Bush himself has actually stated that he's a media creation.
And really now, where was the Fourt Estate when Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent in US v. Watts how, "It is difficult to square this explicit statutory command to impose incremental punishment for each of the multiple offenses of which a defendant is convicted with the conclusion that Congress intended incremental punishment for each offense of which a defendant has been acquitted."
This sort of blatant "travesty of justice" could not occur without the tacit "approval" of the mass media. No?

Posted by: Michael L. Wagner on 10/27/06 at 12:53 PM

If their were a ranking of media organizations based on integrity, lack of bias, factual reporting, original research and honest self assessment, I wonder how organizations such as the New York Times and Reporters Sans Frontières would fare? Last or dead last?

+JSJ

Posted by: Shayne on 10/27/06 at 2:51 PM

2-Right Wings Won't Fly! 3rd Parties?? --Where'd The 2nd Party Go?
This Voter Won't "Suck It Up" -- my "Dream Candidate" has "NPA" next to his/her name on the ballot e.g., I'm thinking this has got to mean "no party affiliation"-- how perfect is that? I mean, I haven't checked but should it turn out to be the Neo Pol Pot Administration, then maybe.....just KIDDING!!.:-) They think they shut us down with "Triangulation" but if enough disenfranchised voters join us, then we can send an embarrasing and powerful statement, with the real potential to change things, rather than throw out our votes AGAIN!, on either bunch of corporate kiss-ups.

The DLC is workin overtime to keep third parties off the ballot, and third party candidates are being blocked from taking part in debates all over the country. Officers of the League of Women Voters have registered their protest. We might also want to boycott the Beltway-Media that violate the first amendment in sponsoring debates that exclude 3rd parties. "Voters have a right to know about all the candidates who'll be on the ballot" (Common Dreams News Wire: Exclusive Debates Violate Voters Rights To Make Informed Choices) http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/1012-12.htm .

"In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. ...The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government..." Justice Black. NYT v. US. 403 US 713

This is precisely why Triangulation was/is so cynical; the whole point was to misguide us; they count on us being so demoralized --as Greenspan so smugly observed--"traumitized," we'll be forced to "suck up' whatever! --no matter how they violate us.

"Triangulation: the Clintonian technique of betraying the groups that had elected you and the principles on which you were elected, to implement the other, opposition, party's platform.

GREEN PULLING SURPRISINGLY WELL IN ILLINOIS GUBERNATORIAL RACE

POLITICAL WIRE - The Illinois gubernatorial race, a new Survey USA poll
shows .. among Illinois independents, the candidates are effectively tied: Topinka (R) gets 31%, Whitney (the Green Party Candidate) 29%!!!!!!!, Blagojevich(D) 27%." What About That?!!

We've had no representation since we lost the 2-party system in the 90s. With an opposition party, there might have been someone covering --the check list of calamities. Uh-oh! , we had a taste of how Bill Clinton feels about public discussion and/or open, debate. And that wasn't the first time he pushed around a journalist. The internet, as well is jammed by Clinton vigilantes; and interviewees are subject to a pre-emptive strike before they have a chance to open their mouths with sarcastic ridicule something like: "Yeah, Madonna's P.M.S --it's Bill Clinton's fault". Well ...no!, but what about the floodgates in the 90s with deregulation, privatization, wall-street/insurance/drug-fraud, and NAFTA-- the global rape that consolidated Anti-Americanism and electrified a rag-tag insurgency. Yeah we need to open Clintonomics to public debate just as we have with EVERY OTHER! administration.

Much as the new democrats (neo-cons) fight like hell to hide it, we're not getting ready to recover from the Bubba Baggage any time soon. The Telecommunications Act, the foundation of democracy, signed away by Bill in 96' went incredibly under-reported until on PBS last week (a decade! later) when they actually showed him signing away our free press--and many democrats STILL! don't have a clue. Hill & Bill are ALL about censorship; and they have Good Reason to freak at the slightest hint of exposure:

By far!, the worst fallout of his MANY betrayals were the extreme right wing precedents he established-- so that by the time he left office "Little Napoleon" (or someone just like him) was absolutely inevitable. Yeah! Clinton DID! The Heavy Lifting for GWB. And Hill & Bill Clinton continue to lead the DLC and our party.

Posted by: Joe DeLibertas on 10/29/06 at 12:00 AM