Funferal

Press Freedom index

I meant to report earlier on the RSF index of press freedom for 2004, which came out a few weeks ago. I was happy to see that Ireland, despite strong libel laws, came out in joint first spot. The top of the list was dominated by European states – primarily Scandinavians and smaller countries such as the Baltic states. The United States was in 22nd position, with Belgium. It was funny to hear one commentator say that because there were many ‘joint’ positions – 8 countries shared first spot, for instance – the United States was really in 11th position. That’s not really how it works.
For those who want to parse the listings a little more, some nuggets:

• The ‘United States in Iraq’ come in 108th place. Somewhat ahead of the soon-to-be-democratic ‘Iraq’ in 148th position. To be fair, violence against journalists by non-state agents is included in the index, and much of Iraq is/was a war-zone during the period surveyed (2003-09-01 to 2004-09-01).
• Those at the bottom of the list are Burma, Cuba, and North Korea. Just behind them are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Vietnam, China, Eritrea and Turkmenistan.
• Israel (36th) does much better than the occupied territories (115th). The Palestinian Authority come in at 127th.
• The two lowest EU members are Italy and Spain, both in 39th position. Next are Greece (33), Poland (32) and the UK (28). Anyone out there know what Italy, Spain, Poland and the UK have in common? Anyone? I’ll give you a clue – it’s a club, and Spain’s not part of it any more….

There’s lots more information to be gleaned, but don’t let me ruin it for you – go look for yourself.
Update 2005-02-28: I mistakenly deleted a trackback from CultureCat “Push-Button Publishing for the People”: The Blogosphere and the Public Sphere