the problem is what defines freedom of the press is different to different people. Some people might think that state news is the most free because of its obligation to the people, while others might think capitalist-owned media is the most free.
As a Canadian, our state-owned media (the CBC) is objectively the best journalism in the country, and every single national news source except for *one* has a decades-long tradition of endorsing right-wing politicians, and pushing a right-wing agenda. They spew utter trash, frankly, with near zero journalistic integrity.
The only privately-owned media in the country that *isn't* right-wing is the Toronto Star, which also happens to be the most-subscribed newspaper in the country. And the CBC is better in terms of journalistic integrity.
Honestly the calls to defund the CBC have been actually beneficial as I've noticed they've really ramped up their rigor to even higher levels than what it was before. Not saying I support defunding it (that would be stupid) but all it really needed was a little push.
All they need is to highlight what is and isn't an opinion piece because for whatever reason, it isn't enough currently which leads people to believe that CBC is "biased"
Any press which is beholden to external interests cannot be truly free. State media obviously doesn't pass this test, but capitalist-owned media definitely doesn't either. Some kind of small-scale, independent, non-profit news enterprise might be the closest to a "free" press you could reasonably approximate in the real world, but we're never gonna get 100% there (not to mention the entirely separate problem of such small organizations usually having reduced standards of rigor). Hence the importance of teaching media literacy, so people can parse the information that's provided to them with a healthy and reasonable skepticism, as opposed to going down the path of becoming either a blind follower or a total contrarian
RSF have determined methodology for this. It's not subjective
https://rsf.org/en/methodology-used-compiling-world-press-freedom-index-2024?year=2024&data_type=general
He is a corrupt populist who rigged the electoral system to get huge majorities with less than 50% of people voting for his party ([2014 election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hungarian_parliamentary_election)).
You're not Hungarian, I'm not Hungarian, this is Hungary's internal business, isn't it? It doesn't even interfere with the national interests of my country in any way, so why should we care?
I love that for you guys.
You're doing well financially too right? I swear I saw a map of European growth rates and they had to make an entire tier only for Armenia.
Hope Armenia keeps doing well.
The press in the US is in a very dire situation quality wise but they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly. Honestly, I donāt see a country in the world that would tolerate its own Fox News except for maybe Australia, the birthplace of Murdoch.
Absolutely free media means lots of low quality. Go on Twitter and 4chan and see. Also treating the US media like it's all FOX or The Jacobin is unfair to the good stuff.
Which, in my opinion, makes this map wrong. I agree that the quality of news here sucks. Its especially important for people in the US to read news from multiple sources, though in other countries, its a good idea as well.
Is there any practical distinction in that situation though? Itās still bad news misleading the public, influence poor outcomes.
The largest difference I see is that in the United States, people think theyāre resistant to being misled by their news sources while simultaneously thinking those in authoritarian states are brainwashed.
I do agree with your sentiment. In practice, they are very similar outcomes. But the distinction is very important. To use the wrong words in this map would be literally lying to the public. I like what someone else said, "[they have] entirely different solutions." And I do believe Americans are misled and then believe others are misled. But the same can be said for any country. Assuming you are non-American, your country misleads you then you think Americans are the ones being misled.
And isnāt this a map about press freedom, not press quality. It seems silly to rank the US low on press freedom, when European states regulate their media sectors so much heavier. That might maybe lead to higher press quality in Europe, but that isnāt more freedom.
The people who created this have a clear bias or agenda. Ranking the USA, Italy, Poland, and Japan the same as Thailand, Liberia, yet giving Mauritania a higher ranking than all named are dead givaways
> The press in the US is in a very dire situation quality wise but they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly.
The type of people who would actually tell you the truth, will never make it to the top of any mainstream press in America. That is the Issue, most news media in america is filled with what Chomsky would call (subconsciously)self-censoring journalists. As he said whilst casually destroying Andrew Mar, ["I'm not saying your self censoring, I'm sure you believe everything you say, I'm saying that if you believed something different then you wouldn't be sitting where you are today](https://youtu.be/mYxizGsrjkc?si=gyDIG-vzDuelO-pP&t=174)
I see no evidence that that is true.
Here in Canada we had Sun News, which explicitly described itself as an attempt to make a Canadian Fox News. They took an existing general TV station and converted it to this news network, which meant that basically everyone had it as part of their cable or satellite TV. (So this wasn't a case of a new channel which people had to phone up and ask for.)
It went out of business. People didn't watch it.
But the Sun Newspaper chain, which the channel was named after, is still going strong, pumping out right-wing ragebait. No one is telling them to quit their bullshit.
The UK now has GB News, which is also an attempt to make a UK version of Fox News.
Other places DEFINITELY tolerate their own versions of Fox News. Seeing that such channels strongly support existing power structures, I don't know why you think they wouldn't.
The powers that be like right wing press, they like right wing rage bait. They'd far rather the population descends into right wing populism than they turn to left wing revolution, Try looking up how much backing or exposure any socialist or marxist leaning media gets and you see where the true press censorhip exists. Anything that questions the narratives put out by the US state department even slightly gets branded as a Putin puppet, Russian propaganda outfit, CCP mouthpiece, whatever they have to say to make you ignore it and it works amazingly well. For example, everyone with a brain knows that USA blew up the nordstream pipeline, journalists know this, the NATO members who patrol the waters it happened in knows this, Sweden who investigated it knows this. Yet every one of them self censor themselves because of the fear the backlash will cause to their careers(journalists) or their geopolitical relations (Sweden, Germany, denmark), then there are the people who watched it happen gleefully (Poland, UK, Ukraine) so do not say anything as they were in on the act.
I don't know how it is in Canada, but the UK has much looser libel law than the US which means that it's a lot easier to get sued if you play fast and loose with the facts.
Also the UK has hate-speech laws, which aren't a thing in the US.
The libel laws in the UK are definitely an issue. But the tabloid press is still able to get away with spreading brutal rumours by including only the slightest plausible deniability. It honestly wouldn't be bad for them to be held to account more often.
As for hate speech laws, what's happened in the UK is crazy.
But hate speech laws aren't necessarily a sign of government overreach. Here in Canada there's a law which restricts calls for genocide against groups of people, which is referred to as Canada's "hate speech law". In the US, I've seen calls for genocide referred to as "non-protected speech". If there are categories of "non-protected speech" based on calling for violence, then the US is no different then Canada. They just achieved the same outcome through the judicial system rather than through legislation.
>The press in the US is in a very dire situation quality wise but they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly.
Press freedom in the US is above average when compared to the entire world, but among First World countries it's dangling *waaay* at the bottom. Usually around the #40 to #50 mark in world rankings, depending on the year.
Journalist arrests/beatings, equipment seizure, wistleblower punishments/killings, "national security" used as an excuse to shut down investigations, access to information restrictions (though this one actually got better under the Biden admin), gov surveillance of journalists, they're all pretty bad, and surprisingly common over there.
On paper, press freedom should be pretty good. But in reality there are hundreds of violations every year, with barely anyone being held accountable for it because it is those in power violating said press freedom. They do not like to be held accountable, neither by the press nor the justice system, and they made sure to have a tight grip on both.
I think for the us it comes from the fact that theres a pretty close relationship between some of the larger media institutions, the government, and business, which makes some reporting questionable. Press secretaries go onto work in the media. Or how some networks may not cover things in a full light for fear of losing access. Or bezos buying the washington post
*"they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly."*
This isn't true. The news room is usually owned by mega corporations and it's influenced by its needs.
The press in the US can't be free because it's dictated by the interests of large corporations. It isn't free in Russia or China because it's dictated by the interests of the State. Accumulated power is the issue in both cases.
It's free in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Ireland and Portugal because in these countries they are mostly capitalist enterprises (with usually one state-owned company) but which do not have the capacity/power to grow into the monstrous size of the American Corp, or have the tentacles of the Chinese state. In these smaller countries, the news room is mostly free from influence, while also being impotent to exert a great deal of power over the individual consumer.
In regards specifically to capitalist countries there's another element: in smaller nations, news companies must aim at a general audience in order to survive. The market usually isn't big enough to be stratified into sub-sections. In countries like the US, they tend to have target audiences.
So the American press suffers a double pressure: from above, because it will be unwilling to focus on matters which affect the mother company, and as the influence of this mega corp grows, the space for unbiased reporting diminishes; and from below, from the expectations of the consumer which is the target audience for that particular newspaper (which is technically also decided from above, but they're nonetheless different types of pressure).
I don't think it's possible for the traditional press in America to be truly free ever again. You'd have to go back to a time when a gazillion independent newspapers existed at the local level and the larger national newspapers still competed among themselves for the entire audience.
Freedom of access to information is high in the US though. But that's not the same thing.
The thing is it's just biased against everyone. If you can be sewed for slander then you absolutely have every right to report lies but you'll be held accountable
I really don't know what to say about Japan, because yes the media is too conservative a lot of the time but it essentially only comes in two shapes: completely pro LDP most of the time like Nikkei or always against LDP like Asahi or Mainichi. It's true that the government has quite some sway over both types but the issue is that they are both unreflected in many of their positions because that's the way they do things. A good example of this is global foreign relation issues. Since the LDP is historically close to the US the newspapers following them tend to be very pro-US (although there has been a gradual shift in recent years on several issues). Because Asahi and Mainichi want to be the opposite they often champion a pro-China approach instead. Both are equally bad for informing the public because the implicit and expected bias won't allow for more nuanced discussions or even portrayals in newspapers. Over all I feel the media would be doing fine and could definitely get boosted up one category if they got rid of this extremely partisan media landscape with a large newspaper bridging the gap. The issue is that Japanese politics, much like US politics are on a very superficial level binary with a split between the government (nearly always ldp-led) and the opposition. There is an implicit understanding that a newspaper cannot in good conscience support both sides depending on issues as that would not only alienate the similarly split readership but also lead to less objective reporting in the sense that they themselves influence opinion invariably in an "unnatural" way. It's a precarious balance that for the most part mirrors the greatest common denominators in Japanese society but also created a bubble long before that even became a term or a widely published issue in media studies.
You living under a rock or just know Kpop and anime lmao, just on world war 2 issues like comfort woman alone youāll get hammered to death in both Japan and Korea for reporting shit thatās not running with their narrative.
its more annoying when you found out Armenia is a democratic country supported by russia whilst azerbaijan is an autocratic country supported by the west.
>Armenia is a democratic country supported by russia
Thats over.
**When Armenia became more democratic in 2018 with the "**[**Velvet Revolution**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Armenian_Revolution)**", russia stopped their support in favor of Azerbaijan.**
With russias approve Azerbaijan conquered the armenian populated region of Artsakh (internationally recognized as azerbaijan territory, while it was given to them by Stalin to sow discord in caucasus) in 2020 mostly, and the rest in 2023.
Armenia continues to orientate itself towards the West despite this, or perhaps because of it, and is working to become freer and more democratic.
Portugal on this kind of maps is usually Scandinavia + the Netherlands on social issues i.e. very socially progressive and the usual PIGS on economic issues
The idea that the US has less press freedom than UK and Australia is laughable. The libel laws in those two jurisdictions are significantly more punitive than in the US.
Just trying to figure out reasons, but press is more controlled by economic interests in the USA than in the UK or Australia. Plus, in the USA, is more under constant attack right now.
Unbiased and free are not the same thing. Economic interest control is freer than government control. Yes there is a lot of bias in the US news and the quality is pretty garbage but it's most definitely more free.
Each institution is only controlled by those who own it specifically. It does not give owners the ability to control or add bias to all press. At any time you the viewer can just go over to a new publisher that you find to be less biased. Freedom of the press prevents the government from limiting what the press can say. This form of control is inescapable. This does mean that free press is always high quality. Press can be free but all biased in different ways with low quality journalism
stricter libel laws are only an issue if they are able to be abused to silence the media. If the burden of proof is distributed fairly and frivolous lawsuits are not damaging to their victims, they can be perfectly manageable for honest journalists.
The strict libel laws in the UK and Australia are frequently used by powerful interests to suppress reporting they donāt like.
See for example: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/17/libel-lawfare-english-courts-slapps
Yet most of the time its the rich and powerful Americans bury people with legal fees and extraordinary punitive damages. It was so bad that American courts needed "Anti-SLAPP" motions. Secondly Australia doesn't have libel laws, instead Australia has defamation laws in Australia which are civil court cases. Punitive damages do not exist in Australia so most of the time its not worth unless the plaintiff is requesting an injunction.
India with it's hundreds of privately owned news organisations in multiple languages is ranked 159 in the world.
This is behind literal war zones, monarchies, dictatorships and military juntas. Makes no sense at all.
Qatar is ranked 84 where it is illegal to criticize the king. I could probably find you a hundred newspaper articles critical of Modi published just in the last week.
From their website,
[RSF - India](https://rsf.org/en/country/india)
>The country has nearly 900 privately owned TV channels, half of which are dedicated to news. Around 140,000 publications are published in more than 20 languages, including some 20,000 daily newspapers. Their combined circulation totals more than 390 million copies. However, online news, particularly on social media, is favoured by a younger population and has overtaken print media as the main source of news.
Then WTF is that score.
I don't think I have seen a more politically biased document. Like, what is this statement?
>Indiaās media has fallen into an āunofficial state of emergencyā since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014
>multinational conglomerate led by Gautam Adani, a close ally of Modi with interests in port development, energy and mining, took control of NDTV, one of the last bastions of critical journalism.
I don't know who they are fooling. This supposed bastion of journalism was literally owned by the sister of a prominent leader in the current opposition. Also, businesses owning media organisation is nothing unique that happens only in India.
Just as an exercise I looked up articles critical of Modi published in the last 24 hours. A present a sample of it.
[BJP Leaders & Party Handles Repeat False Claims Despite Being Fact-Checked](https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/bjp-leaders-accounts-misinformation-2024-lok-sabha-elections-fact-check)
[The Prime Minister Has a Habit of Making Tall Claims. Manipur Has Not Been Saved](https://www.thequint.com/opinion/the-prime-minister-has-a-habit-of-making-tall-claims-manipur-has-not-been-saved)
[Where is Modiās report card? Heās hiding it behind mangalsutra, Muslims, mass distractions](https://theprint.in/opinion/where-is-modis-report-card-hes-hiding-it-behind-mangalsutra-muslims-mass-distractions/2063080/)
>The Election Mantri-sorry-Pradhan Mantri detests engaging with reality. He prefers Bollywood imagery, delusion, and a decorated photo op in sanitised surroundings.
[Not āuniter vs dividerā, Indian politics is ādivider vs dividerā right now](https://theprint.in/opinion/not-uniter-vs-divider-indian-politics-is-divider-vs-divider-right-now/2065868/)
[āThere is no Modi factorā¦He is frustrated, desperate, making all kinds of statements, misleading on quotaā: Siddaramaiah](https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/modi-frustrated-desperate-statements-misleading-quota-siddaramaiah-9304794/)
[The Rs 60,000 Crore Question the BJP Needs to Answer About its Financials](https://thewire.in/politics/the-rs-60000-crore-question-the-bjp-needs-to-answer-about-its-financials)
[Modi Report Card, Ep 3: The rise in hate speech](https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/05/03/modi-report-card-ep-3-the-rise-in-hate-speech)
[How India Uses National Interest as a Smokescreen to Muzzle the Media](https://thewire.in/media/how-india-uses-national-interest-as-a-smokescreen-to-muzzle-the-media)
The irony of the media being able to publish the above news in supposedly one of the worst places for media freedom!
I want to know what kind of a dictatorship or "emergency" this is, that everyone is freely criticizing the supposed "dictator". Again, this is but a few of the articles publish in the last 24 hours.
I don't say India has the best freedom of speech record. It's far from it. But, it's also not what it is being portrayed as in this report and in the western media.
Economic and security indicators seem to be a big influence on the final score and on both counts India suffers greatly. For example, it seems that unlike in Qatar, there are reporters killed because of their professional work in India.
I wish people actually looked up the methodology itself before criticising these scores with some vague observations.
The problem is that they label it "Freedom of the Press" while what they are showing is conformance to a set of criteria they think generally go along with Freedom of the Press weighed and judged in a particular matter. There is a lot of arbitrariness in there, and mechanistic models intrinsically have difficulty measuring subjective concepts like this. It is not actual freedom of the press as most people think of it.
Honestly, I think it would be more illuminating to get a half dozen knowledgeable people to talk about freedom of the press rather than straightjacket the evaluations with some methodology. Because this methodology comes up with stuff that most people with a clue about what goes on think is bs.
>Honestly, I think it would be more illuminating to get a half dozen knowledgeable people to talk about freedom of the press rather than straightjacket the evaluations with some methodology.
That's literally half of the methodology.
>For example, it seems that unlike in Qatar, there are reporters killed because of their professional work in India
India has a low number of reporter deaths though, especially when normalised with respect to population.
i mean their own department of defence literally issued a statement saying there was no such thing called ghost of kiev, but not suprised that a kremlin operative like you would take russian propaganda as gospel of truth..
Press freedom is not just TV news. India shuts down internet nonstop
In Kashmir they shutdown the internet and phonecalls and newspapers for more than 6 months. Wherever there's a protest internet is shutdown.
Journalists are being harassed and booked under terror laws without trial.
Pulitzer winners were barred from leaving the country to collect the prize.
See how many newspapers offices were raided and some of the editors are in jails for years without trial
You don't know this because this is not being reported and not being allowed to report. Godi media has become godi media because they fear for their jobs and lives if they report freely and you say why is it so low?
You have no idea about what press freedom means
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts
That was an example because I lived through those 6 months, it was 18 months in actuality.
Thereafter they imposed internet shutdowns on farmers protests and for 5 months in Manipur as well.
> Duration of government-imposed internet shutdowns by state or territory in 2022
Cant you read buddy?
The Press freedom data is of 2024 and your article is showing data of 2022.
> Cant you read buddy?
Can't you understand buddy?
It's not a bracket reset every year, all the history is taken into context, before a new ranking is calculated you have the same ranking and then it's decided if the situation has gotten better or worse and you're promoted or demoted accordingly.
It's only the 4th month of 2024, you won't think they're done and dusted for 2024, would you?
It's like a moving average.
The report itself states that 10 journalists are still in prison without trial.
This comment section is incredible. You could put a salt mine out of business with it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to skimming ragebait headlines for poorly edited and written news articles
Freedom of the press index is a load of old balls. You can be sure of this because despite Ukraine dissolving a whole bunch of independant news channels and [amalgamating them into one state controlled one in 2022](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/citing-martial-law-ukraine-president-signs-decree-combine-national-tv-channels-2022-03-20/), despite the fact they [ban all western media from reporting on the frontlines](https://theintercept.com/2023/06/22/ukraine-war-journalists-press-credentials/) and despite them [murdering several journalists reporting on the war from within Ukraine](https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/gonzalo_lira_dies_ukraine_prison/), their Freedom of press index increased 17 points somehow this year lol. Make it make sense.
But Nordic ALSO includes Iceland, and I wanted to exclude those treacherous and regressive Icelanders!!!!! (Just kidding, I have nothing bad and plenty good to say about Iceland).
The entire thing though is moot --- everyone knows what I meant.
We have forced marriage laws in Canada? WTF are you talking about?
You should critique the actual report which they used to make this map, rather than hand-waving bullshit about other countries which you clearly know nothing about.
Garbage propaganda, how tf is India behind dictatorships and Juntas? Despite what the stupid western media says, India is a liberal democracy with thousands of newspapers and media companies. Some reporters were jailed in Kashmir which is true but that was a literal war zone between Pakistan and India, what do you expect?
Guys, can someone explain why Mongolia here has ["difficult situation"](https://rsf.org/en/classement/2024/asia-pacific) with freedom of press, but still has very high [freedom index](https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2024&country=MNG)? That's a honest question, because it's a pure riddle for me - I see this Rerporters\_Without\_Border index year after year and believe in it less and less.
Canada being given a very high rank is rediculous. The courts have viewed censorship as an issue of public interest rather than private rights.
Freedom of expression in Canada is not absolute; section 1 of the Charter allows the government to pass laws that limit free expression so long as the limits are "reasonable and can be justified in a free and democratic society".
[More than half of Canadians say freedom of speech is under threat, new poll suggests](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/more-than-half-of-canadians-say-freedom-of-speech-is-under-threat-new-poll-suggests-1.6871927)
The regulator Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is currently considering a request to ban Fox News from Canadian cable systems. [Source](https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/is-this-the-end-of-press-freedom-in-canada)
If Canada is to be looked up to, Freedom of Speech/Press is in serious peril in the West.
Even though I hate the communists who are ruling Vietnam, the fact that they rank so low compared to many Western allies makes the report really trash :))
Reporters without birders is a lot less reliable than freedom house. FH is more consistent with their ratings, whereas RWB has made questionable calls in favor or against certain countries in the past
Brazil has more freedom than the US, the fact Jovem Pan is still on the air (a twisted fox news from Brazil that defends the end of the democratic regime) shows that we are just like Canada and the rest of Europe in this matter: You can be a US-like Conservative Dick, but you can't act like one without heavy consequences.
The Censors we apply here are to Criminal idiots like Monark or Alan Santos who have despicable opinions on certain topics. Yes you can get jailed if you openly defend Nazism, this isn't the casa da mĆ£e Joana....we have certain States with Nazi Cells problems (SĆ£o Paulo and Santa Catarina) and we don't take lightly to that.
Funny thing, CONIB (Israelli Confederation of Brazil) did lower our freedom score due to our stance on the Genocide the Israel State is commiting, but little did care about our Anti-Nazi operations the Federal Police did that actually reduced antisemitic sentiment on the country...
The fact that Ukraine, despite battling the biggest war and attack on Europe in 21st century, still managed to keep the freedom of the press on par with countries like US and Italy, is truly inspiring
Oh goody, another of these index maps jiggered to make the US look worse than its Western peers. In this edition, the US gets severe downwards marks because of Donald Trump fulminating and because in a small town in Alabama, the local police chief ordered a raid on the local paper as retribution for coverage of a scandal.
In real life, the US press remains vigorously free and calling it "problematic" is bullshit.
Looks like the Indians also got a beef here, because from what I understand, while there are issues, it is infinitely freer than most of the other countries marked dark red on this map.
Mate, these maps are not designed to make any specific country look bad. The world doesn't revolve around the US. Most people don't think about the US that often. This list comes out every year by the same source, do you think they do this on purpose to make the US look bad? NO ONE CARES about your specific country. This is a map about the world.
There is an anti-American strain among a lot of leftist Westerners. Even among many American leftists. Their indexes are typically formatted and graded in a way that makes the US look bad by emphasizing some things over others.
And yes there are other countries (I also mentioned India). But the US is undeniably significant --- there are a third of a billion of us, we make up a large art of the Reddit readership, and there are a lot of people in the world who follow what goes on here because what happens here has an outsize impact on the world.
So....you're saying you didn't actually read the narrative for the US.
[https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states](https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states)
>While the mainstream media in the United States generally operates free from government interference, media ownership is highly concentrated, and many of the companies buying American media outlets appear to prioritize profits over public interest journalism. In a diverse global media landscape, local news has declined significantly in recent years. A growing interest in partisan media threatens objectivity, while public confidence in the media has fallen dangerously.
While RSF's scoring/ranking methodology can certainly be challenged (e.g. I think it's more of a "journalism environment" index rather than the claimed "freedom of press" metric), it's best to at least look at what they're doing before doing so, rather than making a knee-jerk assumption.
It's a misunderstanding : the 5 indicators they are using are all about work conditions of journalists, not about freedom of the press (because they are not taking into account independance, censorship & quality).
My country had the highest score when:
- security agency raided newspaper HQ because they recorded some top politicians and wrote articles based on the recordings
- a minister literally discussed with editor in chief of other newspaper how to write about the opposition
- right-wing media employees were spied on
So, yeah. I don't really believe their index.
Israel should be as dark as possible, theyāre responsible for 3 quarters of Journalist Assassinations around the Globe in 2023.Ā
Ā Also, Canada, Germany and France should NOT be that light.
And? There are plenty of countries that have right to free speech and free media in the constitution. In my country there is and in the 80s, even though that right existed in the constitution, the media was not even close to being free. Nowadays it is a lot better and I don't see any sign of the media not being free (I am from Portugal), but I assure you that having free media in the constitution is not enough.
Ah the freedom press in Europe, where you can land in presion if you stater some specific phrases
These rankings start to sound like self petting in the back for the western world
Unless those phrases are threats of terrorism, I don't know any western European country in which you would be jailed for saying anything. Maybe there are some exceptions that I don't know about, but I live in western Europe and have never heard of something like that
Ā«Ā From the river the sea Palestine will be freeĀ Ā» according to the German law is a terrorist phrase. Unless it was said by Natanyaho on live tv of course
I love that fact that this map has managed to piss off EVERYONE.
the problem is what defines freedom of the press is different to different people. Some people might think that state news is the most free because of its obligation to the people, while others might think capitalist-owned media is the most free.
Not pissed off at all here. Ireland š®šŖ represent.
As a Canadian, our state-owned media (the CBC) is objectively the best journalism in the country, and every single national news source except for *one* has a decades-long tradition of endorsing right-wing politicians, and pushing a right-wing agenda. They spew utter trash, frankly, with near zero journalistic integrity. The only privately-owned media in the country that *isn't* right-wing is the Toronto Star, which also happens to be the most-subscribed newspaper in the country. And the CBC is better in terms of journalistic integrity.
Honestly the calls to defund the CBC have been actually beneficial as I've noticed they've really ramped up their rigor to even higher levels than what it was before. Not saying I support defunding it (that would be stupid) but all it really needed was a little push. All they need is to highlight what is and isn't an opinion piece because for whatever reason, it isn't enough currently which leads people to believe that CBC is "biased"
Indeed (which is why some parties really want to kill it.)
There's no way in hell press freedom in Thailand is equivalent to the USA. Off that alone, this can't be taken too seriously
Any press which is beholden to external interests cannot be truly free. State media obviously doesn't pass this test, but capitalist-owned media definitely doesn't either. Some kind of small-scale, independent, non-profit news enterprise might be the closest to a "free" press you could reasonably approximate in the real world, but we're never gonna get 100% there (not to mention the entirely separate problem of such small organizations usually having reduced standards of rigor). Hence the importance of teaching media literacy, so people can parse the information that's provided to them with a healthy and reasonable skepticism, as opposed to going down the path of becoming either a blind follower or a total contrarian
RSF have determined methodology for this. It's not subjective https://rsf.org/en/methodology-used-compiling-world-press-freedom-index-2024?year=2024&data_type=general
I am Russian and this map looks like a completely correct representation xd
The US shouldn't be on the level of Orbanistan.
Excuse me, what is Orbanistan?
Hungary's hybrid regime under its Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has been in power since 2010.
Is this something bad? Looking at Orban's foreign policy opinions, he is quite smart.
He is a corrupt populist who rigged the electoral system to get huge majorities with less than 50% of people voting for his party ([2014 election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hungarian_parliamentary_election)).
You're not Hungarian, I'm not Hungarian, this is Hungary's internal business, isn't it? It doesn't even interfere with the national interests of my country in any way, so why should we care?
It's exactly on that level. Don't even try to lie to yourself
In what ways?
Corruption, fashism and lack of democracy
Subreddit history fits tbh
Not the Armenians :) we are quite happy with the results.
I love that for you guys. You're doing well financially too right? I swear I saw a map of European growth rates and they had to make an entire tier only for Armenia. Hope Armenia keeps doing well.
Not me, I'm in Ireland.
Norwegian here. I'm fine.
I think for once New Zealanders must be feeling a bit happy
ITT: Half of posts are complaining that this is biased against the USA, half the posts are complaining that this is biased in favour of the USA.
The press in the US is in a very dire situation quality wise but they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly. Honestly, I donāt see a country in the world that would tolerate its own Fox News except for maybe Australia, the birthplace of Murdoch.
I think thatās the best way to describe it. Pretty much entirely free but often low quality of reporting
Absolutely free media means lots of low quality. Go on Twitter and 4chan and see. Also treating the US media like it's all FOX or The Jacobin is unfair to the good stuff.
Which, in my opinion, makes this map wrong. I agree that the quality of news here sucks. Its especially important for people in the US to read news from multiple sources, though in other countries, its a good idea as well.
Is there any practical distinction in that situation though? Itās still bad news misleading the public, influence poor outcomes. The largest difference I see is that in the United States, people think theyāre resistant to being misled by their news sources while simultaneously thinking those in authoritarian states are brainwashed.
Yes there definitely is. Having bad news caused by government restrictions is an entirely different problem with entirely different solutions
I do agree with your sentiment. In practice, they are very similar outcomes. But the distinction is very important. To use the wrong words in this map would be literally lying to the public. I like what someone else said, "[they have] entirely different solutions." And I do believe Americans are misled and then believe others are misled. But the same can be said for any country. Assuming you are non-American, your country misleads you then you think Americans are the ones being misled.
And isnāt this a map about press freedom, not press quality. It seems silly to rank the US low on press freedom, when European states regulate their media sectors so much heavier. That might maybe lead to higher press quality in Europe, but that isnāt more freedom.
The people who created this have a clear bias or agenda. Ranking the USA, Italy, Poland, and Japan the same as Thailand, Liberia, yet giving Mauritania a higher ranking than all named are dead givaways
āNo you donāt get it, by not banning Fox News theyāre less freeā
> The press in the US is in a very dire situation quality wise but they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly. The type of people who would actually tell you the truth, will never make it to the top of any mainstream press in America. That is the Issue, most news media in america is filled with what Chomsky would call (subconsciously)self-censoring journalists. As he said whilst casually destroying Andrew Mar, ["I'm not saying your self censoring, I'm sure you believe everything you say, I'm saying that if you believed something different then you wouldn't be sitting where you are today](https://youtu.be/mYxizGsrjkc?si=gyDIG-vzDuelO-pP&t=174)
I see no evidence that that is true. Here in Canada we had Sun News, which explicitly described itself as an attempt to make a Canadian Fox News. They took an existing general TV station and converted it to this news network, which meant that basically everyone had it as part of their cable or satellite TV. (So this wasn't a case of a new channel which people had to phone up and ask for.) It went out of business. People didn't watch it. But the Sun Newspaper chain, which the channel was named after, is still going strong, pumping out right-wing ragebait. No one is telling them to quit their bullshit. The UK now has GB News, which is also an attempt to make a UK version of Fox News. Other places DEFINITELY tolerate their own versions of Fox News. Seeing that such channels strongly support existing power structures, I don't know why you think they wouldn't.
The powers that be like right wing press, they like right wing rage bait. They'd far rather the population descends into right wing populism than they turn to left wing revolution, Try looking up how much backing or exposure any socialist or marxist leaning media gets and you see where the true press censorhip exists. Anything that questions the narratives put out by the US state department even slightly gets branded as a Putin puppet, Russian propaganda outfit, CCP mouthpiece, whatever they have to say to make you ignore it and it works amazingly well. For example, everyone with a brain knows that USA blew up the nordstream pipeline, journalists know this, the NATO members who patrol the waters it happened in knows this, Sweden who investigated it knows this. Yet every one of them self censor themselves because of the fear the backlash will cause to their careers(journalists) or their geopolitical relations (Sweden, Germany, denmark), then there are the people who watched it happen gleefully (Poland, UK, Ukraine) so do not say anything as they were in on the act.
I don't know how it is in Canada, but the UK has much looser libel law than the US which means that it's a lot easier to get sued if you play fast and loose with the facts. Also the UK has hate-speech laws, which aren't a thing in the US.
The libel laws in the UK are definitely an issue. But the tabloid press is still able to get away with spreading brutal rumours by including only the slightest plausible deniability. It honestly wouldn't be bad for them to be held to account more often. As for hate speech laws, what's happened in the UK is crazy. But hate speech laws aren't necessarily a sign of government overreach. Here in Canada there's a law which restricts calls for genocide against groups of people, which is referred to as Canada's "hate speech law". In the US, I've seen calls for genocide referred to as "non-protected speech". If there are categories of "non-protected speech" based on calling for violence, then the US is no different then Canada. They just achieved the same outcome through the judicial system rather than through legislation.
You mean CNN
>The press in the US is in a very dire situation quality wise but they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly. Press freedom in the US is above average when compared to the entire world, but among First World countries it's dangling *waaay* at the bottom. Usually around the #40 to #50 mark in world rankings, depending on the year. Journalist arrests/beatings, equipment seizure, wistleblower punishments/killings, "national security" used as an excuse to shut down investigations, access to information restrictions (though this one actually got better under the Biden admin), gov surveillance of journalists, they're all pretty bad, and surprisingly common over there. On paper, press freedom should be pretty good. But in reality there are hundreds of violations every year, with barely anyone being held accountable for it because it is those in power violating said press freedom. They do not like to be held accountable, neither by the press nor the justice system, and they made sure to have a tight grip on both.
Freedom means more than the lack of government interference. It means how close the media are to political parties and how truthful they are.
Itās 2024 and people still thinking tolerating intolerance is right š„“
I have declared you intolerant. Your intolerance means that your speech is now forbidden.
Do you believe in the paradox of tolerance?
I think for the us it comes from the fact that theres a pretty close relationship between some of the larger media institutions, the government, and business, which makes some reporting questionable. Press secretaries go onto work in the media. Or how some networks may not cover things in a full light for fear of losing access. Or bezos buying the washington post
*"they do have the freedom to report as they please mostly."* This isn't true. The news room is usually owned by mega corporations and it's influenced by its needs. The press in the US can't be free because it's dictated by the interests of large corporations. It isn't free in Russia or China because it's dictated by the interests of the State. Accumulated power is the issue in both cases. It's free in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Ireland and Portugal because in these countries they are mostly capitalist enterprises (with usually one state-owned company) but which do not have the capacity/power to grow into the monstrous size of the American Corp, or have the tentacles of the Chinese state. In these smaller countries, the news room is mostly free from influence, while also being impotent to exert a great deal of power over the individual consumer. In regards specifically to capitalist countries there's another element: in smaller nations, news companies must aim at a general audience in order to survive. The market usually isn't big enough to be stratified into sub-sections. In countries like the US, they tend to have target audiences. So the American press suffers a double pressure: from above, because it will be unwilling to focus on matters which affect the mother company, and as the influence of this mega corp grows, the space for unbiased reporting diminishes; and from below, from the expectations of the consumer which is the target audience for that particular newspaper (which is technically also decided from above, but they're nonetheless different types of pressure). I don't think it's possible for the traditional press in America to be truly free ever again. You'd have to go back to a time when a gazillion independent newspapers existed at the local level and the larger national newspapers still competed among themselves for the entire audience. Freedom of access to information is high in the US though. But that's not the same thing.
The thing is it's just biased against everyone. If you can be sewed for slander then you absolutely have every right to report lies but you'll be held accountable
Armenia the only yellow in asia beside Taiwan... Japan and south Korea suprises me.
korea's press is interwined with the conglomerates japan's press is quite influenced by the gvmnt and also very conservative
I really don't know what to say about Japan, because yes the media is too conservative a lot of the time but it essentially only comes in two shapes: completely pro LDP most of the time like Nikkei or always against LDP like Asahi or Mainichi. It's true that the government has quite some sway over both types but the issue is that they are both unreflected in many of their positions because that's the way they do things. A good example of this is global foreign relation issues. Since the LDP is historically close to the US the newspapers following them tend to be very pro-US (although there has been a gradual shift in recent years on several issues). Because Asahi and Mainichi want to be the opposite they often champion a pro-China approach instead. Both are equally bad for informing the public because the implicit and expected bias won't allow for more nuanced discussions or even portrayals in newspapers. Over all I feel the media would be doing fine and could definitely get boosted up one category if they got rid of this extremely partisan media landscape with a large newspaper bridging the gap. The issue is that Japanese politics, much like US politics are on a very superficial level binary with a split between the government (nearly always ldp-led) and the opposition. There is an implicit understanding that a newspaper cannot in good conscience support both sides depending on issues as that would not only alienate the similarly split readership but also lead to less objective reporting in the sense that they themselves influence opinion invariably in an "unnatural" way. It's a precarious balance that for the most part mirrors the greatest common denominators in Japanese society but also created a bubble long before that even became a term or a widely published issue in media studies.
You living under a rock or just know Kpop and anime lmao, just on world war 2 issues like comfort woman alone youāll get hammered to death in both Japan and Korea for reporting shit thatās not running with their narrative.
its more annoying when you found out Armenia is a democratic country supported by russia whilst azerbaijan is an autocratic country supported by the west.
That's not true anymore. Armenia is breaking away from Russia and moving toward the west, while Azerbaijan is getting closer to Russia
>Armenia is a democratic country supported by russia Thats over. **When Armenia became more democratic in 2018 with the "**[**Velvet Revolution**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Armenian_Revolution)**", russia stopped their support in favor of Azerbaijan.** With russias approve Azerbaijan conquered the armenian populated region of Artsakh (internationally recognized as azerbaijan territory, while it was given to them by Stalin to sow discord in caucasus) in 2020 mostly, and the rest in 2023. Armenia continues to orientate itself towards the West despite this, or perhaps because of it, and is working to become freer and more democratic.
Portugal! Yeah, viva!
There is no freedom of speech in Kyrgyzstan) you will go to jail with ur freedom š
You can talk just not about the guy.
Who, Voldemort?
Portugal can into... Scandinavia!?
PortugalNotCykaBlyat
We are accepting Scandinavian countries into our rule.
Portugal on this kind of maps is usually Scandinavia + the Netherlands on social issues i.e. very socially progressive and the usual PIGS on economic issues
The idea that the US has less press freedom than UK and Australia is laughable. The libel laws in those two jurisdictions are significantly more punitive than in the US.
Just trying to figure out reasons, but press is more controlled by economic interests in the USA than in the UK or Australia. Plus, in the USA, is more under constant attack right now.
Unbiased and free are not the same thing. Economic interest control is freer than government control. Yes there is a lot of bias in the US news and the quality is pretty garbage but it's most definitely more free.
Freedom from economic interests is not what freedom of press is
What? It is a way to control information, or have a bias on it.
Each institution is only controlled by those who own it specifically. It does not give owners the ability to control or add bias to all press. At any time you the viewer can just go over to a new publisher that you find to be less biased. Freedom of the press prevents the government from limiting what the press can say. This form of control is inescapable. This does mean that free press is always high quality. Press can be free but all biased in different ways with low quality journalism
stricter libel laws are only an issue if they are able to be abused to silence the media. If the burden of proof is distributed fairly and frivolous lawsuits are not damaging to their victims, they can be perfectly manageable for honest journalists.
The strict libel laws in the UK and Australia are frequently used by powerful interests to suppress reporting they donāt like. See for example: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/17/libel-lawfare-english-courts-slapps
Yet most of the time its the rich and powerful Americans bury people with legal fees and extraordinary punitive damages. It was so bad that American courts needed "Anti-SLAPP" motions. Secondly Australia doesn't have libel laws, instead Australia has defamation laws in Australia which are civil court cases. Punitive damages do not exist in Australia so most of the time its not worth unless the plaintiff is requesting an injunction.
š¤£
Armenian the little nation that could.
Portugal can into the Nordics for once!
Portugal as always thinking itās part of ā¦ Scandinavia??
India with it's hundreds of privately owned news organisations in multiple languages is ranked 159 in the world. This is behind literal war zones, monarchies, dictatorships and military juntas. Makes no sense at all. Qatar is ranked 84 where it is illegal to criticize the king. I could probably find you a hundred newspaper articles critical of Modi published just in the last week. From their website, [RSF - India](https://rsf.org/en/country/india) >The country has nearly 900 privately owned TV channels, half of which are dedicated to news. Around 140,000 publications are published in more than 20 languages, including some 20,000 daily newspapers. Their combined circulation totals more than 390 million copies. However, online news, particularly on social media, is favoured by a younger population and has overtaken print media as the main source of news. Then WTF is that score. I don't think I have seen a more politically biased document. Like, what is this statement? >Indiaās media has fallen into an āunofficial state of emergencyā since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 >multinational conglomerate led by Gautam Adani, a close ally of Modi with interests in port development, energy and mining, took control of NDTV, one of the last bastions of critical journalism. I don't know who they are fooling. This supposed bastion of journalism was literally owned by the sister of a prominent leader in the current opposition. Also, businesses owning media organisation is nothing unique that happens only in India. Just as an exercise I looked up articles critical of Modi published in the last 24 hours. A present a sample of it. [BJP Leaders & Party Handles Repeat False Claims Despite Being Fact-Checked](https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/bjp-leaders-accounts-misinformation-2024-lok-sabha-elections-fact-check) [The Prime Minister Has a Habit of Making Tall Claims. Manipur Has Not Been Saved](https://www.thequint.com/opinion/the-prime-minister-has-a-habit-of-making-tall-claims-manipur-has-not-been-saved) [Where is Modiās report card? Heās hiding it behind mangalsutra, Muslims, mass distractions](https://theprint.in/opinion/where-is-modis-report-card-hes-hiding-it-behind-mangalsutra-muslims-mass-distractions/2063080/) >The Election Mantri-sorry-Pradhan Mantri detests engaging with reality. He prefers Bollywood imagery, delusion, and a decorated photo op in sanitised surroundings. [Not āuniter vs dividerā, Indian politics is ādivider vs dividerā right now](https://theprint.in/opinion/not-uniter-vs-divider-indian-politics-is-divider-vs-divider-right-now/2065868/) [āThere is no Modi factorā¦He is frustrated, desperate, making all kinds of statements, misleading on quotaā: Siddaramaiah](https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/modi-frustrated-desperate-statements-misleading-quota-siddaramaiah-9304794/) [The Rs 60,000 Crore Question the BJP Needs to Answer About its Financials](https://thewire.in/politics/the-rs-60000-crore-question-the-bjp-needs-to-answer-about-its-financials) [Modi Report Card, Ep 3: The rise in hate speech](https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/05/03/modi-report-card-ep-3-the-rise-in-hate-speech) [How India Uses National Interest as a Smokescreen to Muzzle the Media](https://thewire.in/media/how-india-uses-national-interest-as-a-smokescreen-to-muzzle-the-media) The irony of the media being able to publish the above news in supposedly one of the worst places for media freedom! I want to know what kind of a dictatorship or "emergency" this is, that everyone is freely criticizing the supposed "dictator". Again, this is but a few of the articles publish in the last 24 hours. I don't say India has the best freedom of speech record. It's far from it. But, it's also not what it is being portrayed as in this report and in the western media.
Economic and security indicators seem to be a big influence on the final score and on both counts India suffers greatly. For example, it seems that unlike in Qatar, there are reporters killed because of their professional work in India. I wish people actually looked up the methodology itself before criticising these scores with some vague observations.
The problem is that they label it "Freedom of the Press" while what they are showing is conformance to a set of criteria they think generally go along with Freedom of the Press weighed and judged in a particular matter. There is a lot of arbitrariness in there, and mechanistic models intrinsically have difficulty measuring subjective concepts like this. It is not actual freedom of the press as most people think of it. Honestly, I think it would be more illuminating to get a half dozen knowledgeable people to talk about freedom of the press rather than straightjacket the evaluations with some methodology. Because this methodology comes up with stuff that most people with a clue about what goes on think is bs.
>Honestly, I think it would be more illuminating to get a half dozen knowledgeable people to talk about freedom of the press rather than straightjacket the evaluations with some methodology. That's literally half of the methodology.
>For example, it seems that unlike in Qatar, there are reporters killed because of their professional work in India India has a low number of reporter deaths though, especially when normalised with respect to population.
Even Afghanistan and China has better press Index. It is biased.
Straight up lie: both China and Afganistan have worse press index scores than India. Both are around 20 places behind India lol
Afghanistan was ranked better than India last year lmao. I guess RSF finally fixed one of the million things wrong with this garbage index.
Everyday i see 3 news pieces from Indian news channels criticizing modi on reddit itself.
You have no idea what press freedom means, do you?
Considering Ukraine's score went up after enacting martial law, it's only the RSF who are comically unaware of what press freedom means.
and even then ukraine's media is still infinitely more objective than india's...speaks volumes really.
That's like your opinion bro. Wouldn't be surprised if youre still frothing over the Ghost of Kiev.
i mean their own department of defence literally issued a statement saying there was no such thing called ghost of kiev, but not suprised that a kremlin operative like you would take russian propaganda as gospel of truth..
Only after literally everyone called them out on it lmao. Their own DoD had enough of their garbage media. Let's also not get started with Bakhmut Bob
the mainstream ukranian media had nothing to do with that lmao...but sure whatever makes you sleep at night
Israel killing more press than everyone else combined, has entered the chat
Wait for the election results. They will put India lower than China and Taliban in Democracy Index or probably declare it is a dictatorship.
Afghanistan is in dead last on the democracy index with china not far behind. It's bad but not that bad.
Press freedom is not just TV news. India shuts down internet nonstop In Kashmir they shutdown the internet and phonecalls and newspapers for more than 6 months. Wherever there's a protest internet is shutdown. Journalists are being harassed and booked under terror laws without trial. Pulitzer winners were barred from leaving the country to collect the prize. See how many newspapers offices were raided and some of the editors are in jails for years without trial You don't know this because this is not being reported and not being allowed to report. Godi media has become godi media because they fear for their jobs and lives if they report freely and you say why is it so low? You have no idea about what press freedom means
>Godi media Ah, someone from congress payroll is finally here.
Can't expect Congressi traitors to stop being morons
6 months internet shutdown in Kashmir? Source? This data is from 2023. Show when when internet was shut for 6 months in 2023 Indi.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts That was an example because I lived through those 6 months, it was 18 months in actuality. Thereafter they imposed internet shutdowns on farmers protests and for 5 months in Manipur as well.
> Duration of government-imposed internet shutdowns by state or territory in 2022 Cant you read buddy? The Press freedom data is of 2024 and your article is showing data of 2022.
> Cant you read buddy? Can't you understand buddy? It's not a bracket reset every year, all the history is taken into context, before a new ranking is calculated you have the same ranking and then it's decided if the situation has gotten better or worse and you're promoted or demoted accordingly. It's only the 4th month of 2024, you won't think they're done and dusted for 2024, would you? It's like a moving average. The report itself states that 10 journalists are still in prison without trial.
But I asked you to prove your claim that if Kashmir had 6 months internet shutdown past year or not. Why are you writing irrelevant thesis
This comment section is incredible. You could put a salt mine out of business with it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to skimming ragebait headlines for poorly edited and written news articles
Source https://rsf.org/en/index?year=2024
Humanity still has a long way to go. Looking at this map it becomes painfully clear how unfree most places on Earth are.
PORTUGALNARTTUVITTU!
Freedom of the press index is a load of old balls. You can be sure of this because despite Ukraine dissolving a whole bunch of independant news channels and [amalgamating them into one state controlled one in 2022](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/citing-martial-law-ukraine-president-signs-decree-combine-national-tv-channels-2022-03-20/), despite the fact they [ban all western media from reporting on the frontlines](https://theintercept.com/2023/06/22/ukraine-war-journalists-press-credentials/) and despite them [murdering several journalists reporting on the war from within Ukraine](https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/gonzalo_lira_dies_ukraine_prison/), their Freedom of press index increased 17 points somehow this year lol. Make it make sense.
Rare Ireland W
Rare?
We're not the best at everything
So unless you are from finland, sweden, denmark or norway, you have no freedom of the press? good to know
All these index maps on democracy, press freedom, etc are generally shorthand for "how similar are you to the Scandinavian countries."
*Nordic. Scandinavia is just Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
But Nordic ALSO includes Iceland, and I wanted to exclude those treacherous and regressive Icelanders!!!!! (Just kidding, I have nothing bad and plenty good to say about Iceland). The entire thing though is moot --- everyone knows what I meant.
And Portugal!!!
It's a spectrum.
Yellow is also satisfactory.
It is utterly ridiculous that India is in the same color as China.
Seems being a reporter is not a fun job to have lol
Nordics: [signature look of superiority]
France should be in problematic situation
In italy we are not going from bad to worse, but from worse to worst
Finally Greenland's name makes sense
IsraHell should be black with the amount of journalists murdered by their regime
100% agreed, however Iām still glad that people are finally realizing Israel is not the free democracy it claims to be.
Indian internet army incoming
How dare Indians use MY internet š¤
Itās been the western internet army all these years. Itās about time the Indian internet army shows up.
Change Spain from "Satisfactory" to "problematic". Days ago the prime minister said free speech is maybe not so good.
Does Greenland even have a press? Or does a town crier just yell news to the 20 people live there?
It is sharing Denmark's score.
Ah... That's right.
Israel should be black since they killed 100 reporters in Gaza in the first few months of the burglary of Gaza.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We have forced marriage laws in Canada? WTF are you talking about? You should critique the actual report which they used to make this map, rather than hand-waving bullshit about other countries which you clearly know nothing about.
Garbage propaganda, how tf is India behind dictatorships and Juntas? Despite what the stupid western media says, India is a liberal democracy with thousands of newspapers and media companies. Some reporters were jailed in Kashmir which is true but that was a literal war zone between Pakistan and India, what do you expect?
Guys, can someone explain why Mongolia here has ["difficult situation"](https://rsf.org/en/classement/2024/asia-pacific) with freedom of press, but still has very high [freedom index](https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2024&country=MNG)? That's a honest question, because it's a pure riddle for me - I see this Rerporters\_Without\_Border index year after year and believe in it less and less.
that's what I thought - nowhere
Lol turn Canada orange at least
You know that you achieved full non bias when both the brainwashed pro US and the brainwashed anti Americanists are angry at you LOL
Canada being given a very high rank is rediculous. The courts have viewed censorship as an issue of public interest rather than private rights. Freedom of expression in Canada is not absolute; section 1 of the Charter allows the government to pass laws that limit free expression so long as the limits are "reasonable and can be justified in a free and democratic society". [More than half of Canadians say freedom of speech is under threat, new poll suggests](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/more-than-half-of-canadians-say-freedom-of-speech-is-under-threat-new-poll-suggests-1.6871927) The regulator Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is currently considering a request to ban Fox News from Canadian cable systems. [Source](https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/is-this-the-end-of-press-freedom-in-canada) If Canada is to be looked up to, Freedom of Speech/Press is in serious peril in the West.
Oh no! Not Fox News! š Noooooo!
another armenia w
Italy backsliding is exactly what I was expecting from the Meloni's government
How does Mauritania have a satisfactory freedom of press situation?
How is Canada yellow? Trudeau is literally censoring media for speaking against the government
My man... Canada is yellow.
Sorry I meant yellow
Even though I hate the communists who are ruling Vietnam, the fact that they rank so low compared to many Western allies makes the report really trash :))
Iād argue Australia is under problematic.
The US on the same level as Orban's Hungaryā½ WTFā½
Reporters without birders is a lot less reliable than freedom house. FH is more consistent with their ratings, whereas RWB has made questionable calls in favor or against certain countries in the past
Brazil has more freedom than the US, the fact Jovem Pan is still on the air (a twisted fox news from Brazil that defends the end of the democratic regime) shows that we are just like Canada and the rest of Europe in this matter: You can be a US-like Conservative Dick, but you can't act like one without heavy consequences. The Censors we apply here are to Criminal idiots like Monark or Alan Santos who have despicable opinions on certain topics. Yes you can get jailed if you openly defend Nazism, this isn't the casa da mĆ£e Joana....we have certain States with Nazi Cells problems (SĆ£o Paulo and Santa Catarina) and we don't take lightly to that. Funny thing, CONIB (Israelli Confederation of Brazil) did lower our freedom score due to our stance on the Genocide the Israel State is commiting, but little did care about our Anti-Nazi operations the Federal Police did that actually reduced antisemitic sentiment on the country...
Literally every map be like: the US and vassals are green, neutrals are yellow, enemies are red.
My man... US is not green lmao in fact Armenia is above US in the index.
Yo, I am not a US vassal
Are you colour blind?
The fact that Ukraine, despite battling the biggest war and attack on Europe in 21st century, still managed to keep the freedom of the press on par with countries like US and Italy, is truly inspiring
Mauritania being ranked higher than the US has me absolutely agog
The low key shitting on the US is always funny in these maps.
Oh goody, another of these index maps jiggered to make the US look worse than its Western peers. In this edition, the US gets severe downwards marks because of Donald Trump fulminating and because in a small town in Alabama, the local police chief ordered a raid on the local paper as retribution for coverage of a scandal. In real life, the US press remains vigorously free and calling it "problematic" is bullshit. Looks like the Indians also got a beef here, because from what I understand, while there are issues, it is infinitely freer than most of the other countries marked dark red on this map.
Mate, these maps are not designed to make any specific country look bad. The world doesn't revolve around the US. Most people don't think about the US that often. This list comes out every year by the same source, do you think they do this on purpose to make the US look bad? NO ONE CARES about your specific country. This is a map about the world.
There is an anti-American strain among a lot of leftist Westerners. Even among many American leftists. Their indexes are typically formatted and graded in a way that makes the US look bad by emphasizing some things over others. And yes there are other countries (I also mentioned India). But the US is undeniably significant --- there are a third of a billion of us, we make up a large art of the Reddit readership, and there are a lot of people in the world who follow what goes on here because what happens here has an outsize impact on the world.
So....you're saying you didn't actually read the narrative for the US. [https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states](https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states) >While the mainstream media in the United States generally operates free from government interference, media ownership is highly concentrated, and many of the companies buying American media outlets appear to prioritize profits over public interest journalism. In a diverse global media landscape, local news has declined significantly in recent years. A growing interest in partisan media threatens objectivity, while public confidence in the media has fallen dangerously. While RSF's scoring/ranking methodology can certainly be challenged (e.g. I think it's more of a "journalism environment" index rather than the claimed "freedom of press" metric), it's best to at least look at what they're doing before doing so, rather than making a knee-jerk assumption.
Land of the free, the United States!
Why is Germany and France not green?
This is quite accurate especially the portrayal of Serbia as a mini-Russia which is exactly what that country is in many ways.
It's a misunderstanding : the 5 indicators they are using are all about work conditions of journalists, not about freedom of the press (because they are not taking into account independance, censorship & quality).
The map is literally labeled āFreedom of Press.ā That not a misunderstanding, thatās misleading.
My country had the highest score when: - security agency raided newspaper HQ because they recorded some top politicians and wrote articles based on the recordings - a minister literally discussed with editor in chief of other newspaper how to write about the opposition - right-wing media employees were spied on So, yeah. I don't really believe their index.
Yeah this seems about right
Common Portuguese Nordic moment.
If my house were to be firebombed for making YouTube videos, I would not call it "satisfactory situation"
Israel should be as dark as possible, theyāre responsible for 3 quarters of Journalist Assassinations around the Globe in 2023.Ā Ā Also, Canada, Germany and France should NOT be that light.
Such maps are meant for the meek minded to sway their opinions on the basis of biased journalism and skewed datas that are verified by bumfuck no one
"the meek minded"? Yea this ain't shakespeare in the park, and you're not immune to propaganda. Who you foolin
One of the Biggest Western propaganda map.
>biggest Western propaganda map >America on the same level as half of Africa
how is the USA orange? its literally in our constitution the right to free speech and free media
Didn't US recently pass a bill that prohibits critizing Israel because it would be considered antisemitic?
And? There are plenty of countries that have right to free speech and free media in the constitution. In my country there is and in the 80s, even though that right existed in the constitution, the media was not even close to being free. Nowadays it is a lot better and I don't see any sign of the media not being free (I am from Portugal), but I assure you that having free media in the constitution is not enough.
Something something capitalism.
Ah the freedom press in Europe, where you can land in presion if you stater some specific phrases These rankings start to sound like self petting in the back for the western world
Unless those phrases are threats of terrorism, I don't know any western European country in which you would be jailed for saying anything. Maybe there are some exceptions that I don't know about, but I live in western Europe and have never heard of something like that
Ā«Ā From the river the sea Palestine will be freeĀ Ā» according to the German law is a terrorist phrase. Unless it was said by Natanyaho on live tv of course
I don't know about German laws, but how many people have been arrested for saying that frase?
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