Freedom of Press (Press Freedom Index 2009)

Forostar

Forostar

Ancient Mariner
They call it the Obama Effect: the United States have gained 20 places on this year’s Press Freedom Index, to reach position 20 (out of 175 countries).

persvrijheidindex22.jpg


Some European democracies fall hard in the rankings, every year further. Check out France and Italy, they keep falling!
:nuts2:

Israel's 93rd place is also crap, but was to be expected. Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, had impact on the press. Internal situation, Israel sank 47 places in the index to 93rd position. Kuwait (60th), United Arab Emirates (86th) and Lebanon (61st) are doing better.


Rank Country Mark 
1 Denmark 0,00 
- Finland 0,00 
- Irland 0,00 
- Norway 0,00 
- Sweden 0,00 
6 Estonia 0,50 
7 Netherlands 1,00 
- Switzerland 1,00 
9 Iceland 2,00 
10 Lituania 2,25 
11 Belgium 2,50 
- Malta 2,50 
13 Austria 3,00 
- Latvia 3,00 
- New Zealand 3,00 
16 Australia 3,13 
17 Japan 3,25 
18 Germany 3,50 
19 Canada 3,70 
20 Luxembourg 4,00 
- United Kingdom 4,00 
- United States of America 4,00 
23 Jamaica 4,75 
24 Czech Republic 5,00 
25 Cyprus 5,50 
- Hungary 5,50 
27 Ghana 6,00 
28 Trinidad and Tobago  7,00 
29 Uruguay 7,63 
30 Costa Rica 8,00 
- Mali 8,00 
- Portugal 8,00 
33 South Africa 8,50 
34 Macedonia 8,75 
35 Greece 9,00 
- Namibia 9,00 
37 Poland 9,50 
- Slovenia 9,50 
39 Bosnia and Herzegovina 10,50 
- Chile 10,50 
- Guyana 10,50 
42 Surinam 10,60 
43 France 10,67 
44 Cape Verde 11,00 
- Slovakia 11,00 
- Spain 11,00 
47 Argentina 11,33 
48 Hong-Kong 11,75 
49 Italy 12,14 
50 Romania 12,50 
51 Cyprus (North) 14,00 
- Maldives 14,00 
- Mauritius 14,00 
54 Paraguay 14,33 
55 Panama 14,50 
56 Papua New Guinea 14,70 
57 Burkina Faso 15,00 
- Haiti 15,00 
59 Taiwan 15,08 
60 Kuwait 15,25 
61 Lebanon 15,42 
62 Botswana 15,50 
- Liberia 15,50 
- Malawi 15,50 
- Serbia 15,50 
- Tanzania 15,50 
- Togo 15,50 
68 Bulgaria 15,61 
69 South Korea 15,67 
70 Bhutan 15,75 
71 Brazil 15,88 
72 Benin 16,00 
- Seychelles 16,00 
- Timor-Leste 16,00 
75 Kosovo 16,58 
76 Nicaragua 16,75 
77 Montenegro 17,00 
78 Croatia 17,17 
79 El Salvador 17,25 
80 Central African Republic 17,75 
81 Georgia 18,83 
82 Comoros 19,00 
- Mozambique 19,00 
84 Ecuador 20,00 
85 Peru 20,88 
86 Uganda 21,50 
- United Arab Emirates 21,50 
88 Albania 21,75 
89 Senegal 22,00 
- Ukraine 22,00 
91 Mongolia 23,33 
92 Guinea-Bissau 23,50 
93 Israel (Israeli territory) 23,75 
94 Qatar 24,00 
95 Bolivia 24,17 
96 Kenya 25,00 
97 Zambia 26,75 
98 Dominican Republic 26,83 
99 Lesotho 27,50 
100 Guinea 28,50 
- Indonesia 28,50 
- Mauritania 28,50 
103 Burundi 29,00 
- Côte d’Ivoire 29,00 
105 India 29,33 
106 Guatemala 29,50 
- Oman 29,50 
108 United States of America (extra-territorial) 30,00 
109 Cameroon 30,50 
110 Djibouti 31,00 
111 Armenia 31,13 
112 Jordan 31,88 
113 Tajikistan 32,00 
114 Moldova 33,75 
115 Sierra Leone 34,00 
116 Congo 34,25 
117 Cambodia 35,17 
118 Nepal 35,63 
119 Angola 36,50 
- Bahrein 36,50 
121 Bangladesh 37,33 
122 Philippines 38,25 
- Turkey 38,25 
124 Venezuela 39,50 
125 Kyrgyzstan 40,00 
126 Colombia 40,13 
127 Morocco 41,00 
128 Honduras 42,00 
129 Gabon 43,50 
130 Thailand 44,00 
131 Malaysia 44,25 
132 Chad 44,50 
133 Singapore 45,00 
134 Madagascar 45,83 
135 Nigeria 46,00 
136 Zimbabwe 46,50 
137 Gambia 48,25 
- Mexico 48,25 
139 Niger 48,50 
140 Ethiopia 49,00 
141 Algeria 49,56 
142 Kazakhstan 49,67 
143 Egypt 51,38 
144 Swaziland 52,50 
145 Iraq 53,30 
146 Azerbaijan 53,50 
- Democratic Republic of Congo 53,50 
148 Sudan 54,00 
149 Afghanistan 54,25 
150 Israel (extra-territorial) 55,50 
151 Belarus 59,50 
152 Fiji 60,00 
153 Russia 60,88 
154 Tunisia 61,50 
155 Brunei 63,50 
156 Libya 64,50 
157 Rwanda 64,67 
158 Equatorial Guinea 65,50 
159 Pakistan 65,67 
160 Uzbekistan 67,67 
161 Palestinian Territories 69,83 
162 Sri Lanka 75,00 
163 Saudi Arabia 76,50 
164 Somalia 77,50 
165 Syria 78,00 
166 Vietnam 81,67 
167 Yemen 83,38 
168 China 84,50 
169 Laos 92,00 
170 Cuba 94,00 
171 Burma 102,67 
172 Iran 104,14 
173 Turkmenistan 107,00 
174 North Korea 112,50 
175 Eritrea 115,50 
 
Croatia #78.

That's both right and wrong. The position is right but the press isn't repressed, they're corrupted.
Every journal and daily press apart from tabloids is owned either by a richest entrepretour in the country (highly corrupted) or by a company that's the subsidiary, commercial arm, of Austrian Catholic Church (same corruption and also right wing).

Exposed journalists are writing for personal interests (money), and tabloids don't care about real issues as long as they fill their pages with bullshit.

There are four nation-wide open air TV channels. Two state, two private. Private ones are bullshit. There's 0% of real journalism there, it's just hollywood scandals, red carpet, big brother and everything else you can imagine. And Michael Dudikoff movies. State channels are professional, there's some class there but it's the TV of the governing elite. However, there is actually stuff which goes on ordinary days around midnight (when half of nation is asleep), that's highly objective and raises an eyebrow. At least something.

Bigger internet portals won't reveal the truth, they'll jump like dogs and go crazy about some affair, but only if it was dug out and published first by someone else. Smaller internet portals are the oasis for journalists who are actually doing their job with decency.

So to summarize, if you want to reveal something big;

- a lot of papers won't do it because they're in same mafia circles
- TV won't do it, stations either don't care or see line above.
- big internet portals won't do it because they're sponsored by big companies who are, guess what, mafia.
- small internet portals will do it, and what happens then?

Nothing. Your head will remain there. Why?

Because half of nation are retarded assholes who either believe that anything negative about croatian politics is yugocommunist anti-catholic anti-croatian propaganda, or just don't care.

In a nutshell, freedom of press in here comes down to barks at the moon.
 
Oh yeah, being directly compared to country that's basically rotten makes me damn happy.
But you're right, we're very close to Albania in terms of governance.
 
I'm pretty dissatisfied with this. The Reporters Sans Frontières website offers the list, an introduction on how the lists were compiled and a sheet of questions for download, but they don't tell any details on the individual countries. For example, I'd be interested what exactly gave France such a low ranking and why the organisation feels that Germany has however slight restrictions on freedom of press. This is at best an overview, but I'd like to see a detailed report.
 
To read about a bigger zone go here:

http://www.rsf.org/en-classement1003-2009.html

Then click on e.g. "Europe & ex-USSR" under "Close-up on ..."

For individual countries (unfortunately not all texts are there yet, e.g. I still miss the Netherlands and Canada):

Go to the bottom of the site, left from the index, and choose a country under "world report".

Germany (rank 18):

The German press, which is renowned for the rigour and independence of its media, reacted badly to new laws regulating the use of electronic data and telephone communications and the resulting threat to confidentiality of information. The scandal of phone tapping by one of the biggest telecommunications groups on a section of the press added to media misgivings about the possible consequences of the application of the new rules.

GERMANY PRESS FREEDOM BAROMETER 2009
journalists killed 0
media assistants killed 0
journalists imprisoned 0
media assistants imprisoned 0
cyberdissidents imprisoned 0

The German press in May 2008 discovered the scale of phone tapping carried out by Deutsche Telekom against journalists, union leaders and a section of its own board of directors between 2005 and 2006 as the company’s management tried to discover the source of several months of internal leaks of strategic information to the press, which created a crisis of confidence within its management.

The year 2008 was also marked by a ban on foreign television broadcasts from Germany. The interior ministry on 19 June 2008 banned Kurdish exiled ROJ TV from operating there. The television channel which has a Danish licence is suspected of links with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The company Viko Fernseh Produktion which runs ROJ TV in Wuppertal was searched and forced to halt is activities. Lebanese television channel Al Manar was also banned from broadcasting on cable networks by the interior ministry, on 1st December 2008, because the content of some programmes on the channel, which is owned by Hezbollah, were judged to be anti-Semitic. It remains accessible by satellite, although it is banned from selling advertising or receiving donations.

The German Supreme Court, anxious to protect confidentiality and private life of users on 27 February 2008 put major obstacles in the way of verifying emails and the use of electronic data. This new “fundamental right to the guarantee of confidentiality and integrity of information systems” could however be challenged by a decision taken by the federal constitutional court on 6 November 2008 forcing telecommunications companies to transmit personal details and the location of users’ calls to the national security services. Operators have to keep data for a maximum of six months but investigators can only be allowed access to the data in the case of serious offences. A final court ruling is still being awaited.

The government and the parliament in January 2009 adopted an anti-terror law that extends the role and the rights of the federal justice ministry. The new law allows an “online search” and the examination of suspect computers. This however can only be carried out with a court warrant, in line with the constitutional court ruling, and granted only in case of serious offences.

Surveillance carried out in April 2008 against a Der Spiegel editor Susanna Koelbl led to questioning of the robustness of safeguards. The federal information and intelligence agency had for six months monitored email exchanges between the journalist and Afghan trade minister Amin Farhang in a unacceptable practice contrary to instructions just given by the federal government to its agents not to spy on journalists.

+

France (rank 43)

The state of press freedom has been worsening in France for the past several years as a result of tension between the press and the authorities, growing pressure on journalists to reveal their sources of information and reform of the public broadcast sector.

FRANCE PRESS FREEDOM BAROMETER 2009
journalists killed 0
media assistants killed 0
journalists imprisoned 0
media assistants imprisoned 0
cyberdissidents imprisoned 0

The year 2008 opened in a climate of heightened tension between the president, the government and the media. Nicolas Sarkozy in February broke with the practice that French heads of state do not sue journalists. The president laid a criminal complaint against Le Nouvel Observateur after it carried an article, which turned out to be untrue, relating to a text he had allegedly sent to his former wife. In May, a deputy for Hauts-de-Seine and spokesman for the president’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), Frederic Lefebvre, launched a verbal attack against the AFP news agency for failing to put out one of his press statements. The president returned to the fight and accused L’Express, Marianne, Le Parisien, Le Journal du Dimanche and Agence France-Presse of “taking on the job of the opposition”. Then reform of public broadcasting, begun in May 2008 and promulgated at the start of March 2009, allowed the council of ministers to appoint press bosses in the public sector. Finally, in April 2009, four journalist working for the website Rue89 and for France 3 were summoned by the anti-crime unit, the BDRP, and accused of theft and receiving stolen property after Rue89 posted a video on its website of off air remarks made by Nicolas Sarkozy, particularly about public service in the media ahead of an interview on the evening news bulletin on France 3.

Alongside deteriorating relations between the public authorities and the press, there has been a worrying rise throughout the same period in investigations, summonses and searches involving journalists and media. France now holds the European record in this field. The year 2008 began under the cloud of the case of Guillaume Dasquié, editor of Géopolitique.com, who was held in custody in December 2007, facing charges of “violating defence secrets” and closed with the early morning arrest of Libération journalist Vittorio de Filippis, who was subjected to a body search before being investigated in a straightforward libel case. In the meantime, several media offices were subjected to searches including AutoPlus, La Nouvelle République du Centre, and Tac Presse.

Journalists, who have been accused of violating the confidentiality of criminal investigations and professional and defence secrets, have come under pressure to reveal their sources of information. Reporters Without Borders is campaigning for the principle of protection of sources to be enshrined in the 1881 press law. Nicolas Sarkozy made this very promise during his election campaign, but even though a draft law was put forward on 2 April 2008, it is still waiting for its second reading in the National Assembly which has a heavy backlog of business.

+

Croatia (rank 78)

A wave of bombings against the political and media world during 2008 tarnished the image of Croatia with the European Union at a time when the country was hoping to join without delay. Government reforms came up against resistance from a legal system undermined by political interference and corruption. The steady expansion of the media sector was not however accompanied by genuine pluralism. As in the neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia, journalists’ investigations of war crimes and criminal gangs exposed them to a number of pressures.

CROATIA PRESS FREEDOM BAROMETER 2009
0 journalists killed
0 media assistants killed
0 journalists imprisoned
0 media assistants imprisoned
0 cyberdissidents imprisoned

The murder in a car bombing in October 2008 of journalist Ivo Pukanic, owner and former editor of the weekly Nacional and of marketing director Niko Franjic, sent shock waves through Croatian society. The killing of Pukanic, who had survived a previous attempt in April 2008, could have been linked to his reports into cigarette smuggling or the publication in 2003 of an interview with a former Croatian general, Ante Gotovina, sought for war crimes by the International Criminal Court for the ex-Yugoslavia (ICTY). In an unaccustomed break with the impunity that generally marks investigations into abuses against the press, the interior ministry opened an investigation that led to the identification of the two killers. The ministry on 8 April 2009 also offered rewards of almost 30,000 euros for any information leading to their arrest.

Investigative reporting on war crimes committed during the Serbo-Croatian conflict of 1991-1995 though not taboo is rare and carried out only with great caution. The journalist Zeljko Peratovic who has suffered judicial harassment from interior minister, Tomislav Karamarko, since January 2008 had said in his blog (www.peratovic.blog.hr) that the minister had obstructed the investigation into the murder in a car bombing of Milan Levar, a witness under protection of the ICTY. The minister accuses the journalist of contravening Article 322/1 KZA of the criminal code providing for one year in prison and an open-ended ban on putting out news.
 
Thanks, Foro! Didn't have the time to search the website thoroughly this morning. :)

The government and the parliament in January 2009 adopted an anti-terror law that extends the role and the rights of the federal justice ministry. The new law allows an “online search” and the examination of suspect computers. This however can only be carried out with a court warrant, in line with the constitutional court ruling, and granted only in case of serious offences.
Click to expand...

While intolerable, I don't see what this has to do with freedom of press. Ah well.
 
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