Ariddia
23-10-2008, 11:46
Reporters Without Borders issues 2008 press freedom rankings (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29031)
Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway are in joint first place. Next come Estonia, Finland and Ireland, in joint fourth. Belgium, Latvia, New Zealand, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland are joint seventh.
Europe remains the bastion of press freedom, with every country in the top twelve being in Europe, except New Zealand.
Canada ranks 13th. Germany is 20th, the UK 23rd, Australia 28th, Japan 29th, France 35th (just behind Mali, Greece, Ghana and Cyprus), the USA is joint 36th (along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain and Taiwan). The "USA (extra-territorial)" is ranked 119th (behind India and ahead of Georgia).
Italy, in 44th, is the lowest-ranking of the founding members of the EU. Bulgaria, 59th, is the lowest-ranking member of the EU.
Israel is ranked 46th on its own territory. "Israel (extra-territorial)" is 149th.
Russia is 141st (behind Mexico and ahead of Ethiopia). China is 167th.
The bottom three are Turkmenistan (171st), North Korea (172nd) and Eritrea (173rd).
Here are RWB's regional assessments:
Americas:
top: Canada (13)
bottom: Cuba (169)
Close-up on... the Americas
The United States rose twelve places to 36th position. The release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base contributed to this improvement. Although the absence of a federal “shield law” means the confidentiality of sources is still threatened by federal courts, the number of journalists being subpoenaed or forced to reveal their sources has declined in recent months and none has been sent to prison. But the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, California, is still unpunished a year later. The way the investigation into his murder has become enmeshed in local conflicts of interest and the lack of federal judicial intervention also help to explain why the United States did not get a higher ranking. Account was also taken of the many arrests of journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions.
The index’s most spectacular fall is Bolivia (115th), which plummeted 47 places. Its institutional and political crisis has exacerbated the polarisation between state and privately-owned media and exposed journalists to violence because of their presumed links with the government or opposition. One state media employee was killed. Unlike Hugo Chávez’s government in Venezuela (113rd), Evo Morales’ government has tried to defuse the media war by repeatedly offering to talk with the opposition.
Peru (108th) still leads the way as regards the number of physical attacks on journalists, but the level of violence continues to be greater in Colombia (126th) and Mexico (140th), where armed groups and drug traffickers threaten the media’s survival in some areas. While the number of journalists killed in these two countries has fallen, more are fleeing into exile. There have been signs of opening by Raúl Castro’s government in Cuba (last in the Americas at 169th), but they have not changed the human rights situation. Twenty-three dissident journalists are still in prison and press freedom is still non-existent.
Jamaica (21st) and Trinidad and Tobago (27th) are joined in the top 30 this year by Surinam (26th), which has been included in the index for the first time, as has Guyana (88th). The latter’s low position is due to tension between President Bharrat Jagdeo’s government and the press, and to the state’s monopoly of radio broadcasting. Haiti (73rd) continues to rise slowly and Argentina (68th) has also improved, but Brazil (82nd) has barely shifted because of several serious cases of violence against the press.
Europe:
top: Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway (1)
bottom: Belarus (154)
Close-up on... Europe and former USSR
There is little change at the head of the index this year. Aside from Canada and New Zealand, the top 20 countries are all European. None of the European Union’s 27 members is outside the top 60. Europe’s bad boy, Bulgaria (59th), trailed behind the others because of its failure to deal firmly with corruption and violence that is both gangland and political in origin. Italy (44th) and Spain (36th) also received mediocre rankings due, in the former, to a poor overall climate and to mafia threats and violence, and in the latter, to the fear imposed by the Basque armed separatist group ETA.
France (35th) has for the past two years held the European record for police and court interventions linked to the confidentiality of journalists’ sources, with five searches, two preliminary indictments and four summonses. The arrest of Guillaume Dasquié of Geopolitique.com by the Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DST), an intelligence agency, and the arrest of an Auto Plus reporter, accompanied by raids on his home and office, show that the confidentiality of sources is not always adequately protected in the “land of human rights.”
The most significant development in the former Soviet periphery is the deterioration in the Caucasus, where two of its three independent countries - Armenia (102nd) and Georgia (120th) - had major problems and introduced states of emergency. Several journalists fell victim to the sudden outbreak of war in Georgia.
The countries of Central Asia continue to lag far behind, with Uzbekistan (162nd) and Turkmenistan (171st) coming in the last 20 along with Belarus (154th). The situation in Russia (141st), where the press continues to be subject to violence and harassment, has been changed little by Dimitri Medvedev’s election as president.
Asia:
top: Japan (29)
bottom: North Korea (172)
Oceania:
top: New Zealand (7)
bottom: Tonga (82)
Close-up on... Asia
Asia still has the biggest representation in the 10 countries at the bottom of the ranking. Most of them are dictatorships, but they also for the first time include Sri Lanka (165th), which has an elected government and where the press faces violence that is only too often organised by the state.
At the other end of the spectrum, New Zealand (7th), Australia (28th) and Japan (29th) - countries where democracy is deeply anchored - are in the top 30. New Zealand is one of the only two non-European countries in the top 20, the other being Canada (13th).
Some young democracies have advanced significantly in the past year. Maldives (104th) now has a flourishing independent press. The same goes for Bhutan (74th), where the first privately-owned news media are gradually establishing a distinct identity for themselves.
Afghanistan (156th), on the other hand, has fallen in the ranking because of violence, not only by the Taliban and the warlords’ henchmen but also by government representatives. Burma’s position was already bad and now is worse (170th). The crackdown launched after the September 2007 protests never ended : dozens of journalists have been arrested or threatened, while the military censorship is relentless. In Southeast Asia, Cambodia (126th) got a bad score as a result of a journalist’s murder that was probably instigated by a police officer, and the fact that control of the media was stepped up for the parliamentary elections. Vietnam (168th) fell six places as a result of a crackdown on the liberal media for being too probing in its reporting on corruption.
Major political changes took place in Pakistan (152nd) and Nepal (138th) but their effects on press freedom have not yet been felt. Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s departure as Pakistan’s president should benefit the press but the war with the Taliban is an even more serious problem for journalists.
The low ranking accorded to the United States outside of its own territory (119th) is due in part to the US military’s abuses in Afghanistan where a fixer for a Canadian TV network was arbitrarily detained for several months without any form of trial.
China (167th) continues to have a low ranking despite the efforts of many news media to elude the straightjacket of censorship and police controls. The number of arrests and cases of news surveillance and control by the political police and Propaganda Department is still very high and prevents the new Asian power from achieving any significant improvement.
Close-up on Maghreb / Middle East
The same six Middle East champions of repression that are near the bottom of the world press freedom index every year have confirmed their status this year again. Free expression continues to be no more than a dream in Iraq (158th), Syria (159th), Libya (160th), Saudi Arabia (161st), the Palestinian Territories (163rd) and Iran (166th). Journalists are subjected to relentless censorship and in some cases incredible violence in these countries. The Palestinian Territories have never before fallen so far in a year. The power struggle between the main factions has taken a disastrous toll on press freedom. The political split between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has been accompanied by a division of the media. The Israeli military’s responsibility for the death of a Palestinian cameraman employed by Reuters in April and the impunity granted to the soldier who fired the fatal shell account for Israel’s fall (149th outside its own territory) in the ranking.
In the Maghreb, Morocco (122nd) continues the fall it began two years ago. The decline in relations between government and press increased significantly with the jailing of journalist Mostapha Hurmatallah. A series of prosecutions of journalists and Internet users has shown that press freedom in Morocco stops at the doors of the royal palace.
Lebanon (66th) has risen 30 places as no journalist was on the list of victims of this year’s bombings. The Hezbollah-orchestrated offensive against certain media affiliated to the anti-Syrian opposition left no victims and trigged a wave of indignation in Lebanese society.
Africa:
top: Namibia (23)
bottom: Eritrea (173)
Close-up on... Africa
Some African leaders have understood the advantages their countries could derive from press freedom. Others have behaved like despots again this year. The continent’s best-placed countries continue by and large to be the same, with Namibia (23rd), Mali (31st), Cape Verde (36th) and Mauritius (47th) coming in the top 50. Some countries that were sorely tried by years of war or dictatorship are emerging from the depths to which they were plunged by violence. They include Liberia (51st), where some police officers still behave with deplorable brutality, and Togo (53rd), which is managing to adhere to acceptable democratic standards.
In democracies such as Botswana (66th) and Benin (70th), the climate between the government and the press often deteriorates, preventing these countries from attaining the positions they would otherwise deserve, given their overall political situation.
Senegal (86th) has fallen again in the ranking because of the government’s stubborn refusal to amend the press law and the often outrageous behaviour of some of Dakar’s newspapers. Senegalese journalists were imprisoned again this year. The bad surprise came from Mauritania (105th), where legislative reforms were clearly inadequate and the political culture continues to be marked by former President Ould Taya’s police-state practices.
There is no point in having a diverse and often insolent press unless you tolerate it without resorting to the security forces or an easily influenced legal system. In Central African Republic (85th), Burundi (94th) and Guinea (99th), for example, the least political unrest can send journalists to prison or at least the police station.
This year’s black spots in Africa were Kenya (97th), which fell 19 places as a result of post-electoral violence, and above all Niger (130th), which fell 41 places after a very trying year for journalists in Niamey and elsewhere. Reporting on the Tuareg uprising in the north of the country has become an absolute taboo for the government, especially in the run-up to the 2009 presidential election.
The African countries near the bottom of the ranking are also the same ones as usual. They include Gambia (137th), Democratic Republic of Congo (148th) and Zimbabwe (151st), where independent journalism requires courage, determination and an ability to put up with violence and injustice.
Finally, the gigantic posters to the glory of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema throughout “Africa’s Kuwait” say it all about the media situation in Equatorial Guinea (156th). But the continent’s most abused country is yet again Eritrea (173rd), last in the ranking for the second year running. President Issaias Afeworki clings to his deliberate choice of cruelty to the many journalists held incommunicado since 2001, and despotism as his method of governing a country whose citizens continue to flee into exile.
There... In RWB's view, that's how countries around the world relate to one another this year.
In some ways, it challenges generalisations and misconceptions. How many people would have assumed that there is more press freedom in Mali than in Italy? More press freedom in Kuweit than in Argentina?
It's been a tradition for me to start a thread on these rankings once a year, so here it is. :p Thoughts?
Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway are in joint first place. Next come Estonia, Finland and Ireland, in joint fourth. Belgium, Latvia, New Zealand, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland are joint seventh.
Europe remains the bastion of press freedom, with every country in the top twelve being in Europe, except New Zealand.
Canada ranks 13th. Germany is 20th, the UK 23rd, Australia 28th, Japan 29th, France 35th (just behind Mali, Greece, Ghana and Cyprus), the USA is joint 36th (along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain and Taiwan). The "USA (extra-territorial)" is ranked 119th (behind India and ahead of Georgia).
Italy, in 44th, is the lowest-ranking of the founding members of the EU. Bulgaria, 59th, is the lowest-ranking member of the EU.
Israel is ranked 46th on its own territory. "Israel (extra-territorial)" is 149th.
Russia is 141st (behind Mexico and ahead of Ethiopia). China is 167th.
The bottom three are Turkmenistan (171st), North Korea (172nd) and Eritrea (173rd).
Here are RWB's regional assessments:
Americas:
top: Canada (13)
bottom: Cuba (169)
Close-up on... the Americas
The United States rose twelve places to 36th position. The release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base contributed to this improvement. Although the absence of a federal “shield law” means the confidentiality of sources is still threatened by federal courts, the number of journalists being subpoenaed or forced to reveal their sources has declined in recent months and none has been sent to prison. But the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, California, is still unpunished a year later. The way the investigation into his murder has become enmeshed in local conflicts of interest and the lack of federal judicial intervention also help to explain why the United States did not get a higher ranking. Account was also taken of the many arrests of journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions.
The index’s most spectacular fall is Bolivia (115th), which plummeted 47 places. Its institutional and political crisis has exacerbated the polarisation between state and privately-owned media and exposed journalists to violence because of their presumed links with the government or opposition. One state media employee was killed. Unlike Hugo Chávez’s government in Venezuela (113rd), Evo Morales’ government has tried to defuse the media war by repeatedly offering to talk with the opposition.
Peru (108th) still leads the way as regards the number of physical attacks on journalists, but the level of violence continues to be greater in Colombia (126th) and Mexico (140th), where armed groups and drug traffickers threaten the media’s survival in some areas. While the number of journalists killed in these two countries has fallen, more are fleeing into exile. There have been signs of opening by Raúl Castro’s government in Cuba (last in the Americas at 169th), but they have not changed the human rights situation. Twenty-three dissident journalists are still in prison and press freedom is still non-existent.
Jamaica (21st) and Trinidad and Tobago (27th) are joined in the top 30 this year by Surinam (26th), which has been included in the index for the first time, as has Guyana (88th). The latter’s low position is due to tension between President Bharrat Jagdeo’s government and the press, and to the state’s monopoly of radio broadcasting. Haiti (73rd) continues to rise slowly and Argentina (68th) has also improved, but Brazil (82nd) has barely shifted because of several serious cases of violence against the press.
Europe:
top: Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway (1)
bottom: Belarus (154)
Close-up on... Europe and former USSR
There is little change at the head of the index this year. Aside from Canada and New Zealand, the top 20 countries are all European. None of the European Union’s 27 members is outside the top 60. Europe’s bad boy, Bulgaria (59th), trailed behind the others because of its failure to deal firmly with corruption and violence that is both gangland and political in origin. Italy (44th) and Spain (36th) also received mediocre rankings due, in the former, to a poor overall climate and to mafia threats and violence, and in the latter, to the fear imposed by the Basque armed separatist group ETA.
France (35th) has for the past two years held the European record for police and court interventions linked to the confidentiality of journalists’ sources, with five searches, two preliminary indictments and four summonses. The arrest of Guillaume Dasquié of Geopolitique.com by the Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DST), an intelligence agency, and the arrest of an Auto Plus reporter, accompanied by raids on his home and office, show that the confidentiality of sources is not always adequately protected in the “land of human rights.”
The most significant development in the former Soviet periphery is the deterioration in the Caucasus, where two of its three independent countries - Armenia (102nd) and Georgia (120th) - had major problems and introduced states of emergency. Several journalists fell victim to the sudden outbreak of war in Georgia.
The countries of Central Asia continue to lag far behind, with Uzbekistan (162nd) and Turkmenistan (171st) coming in the last 20 along with Belarus (154th). The situation in Russia (141st), where the press continues to be subject to violence and harassment, has been changed little by Dimitri Medvedev’s election as president.
Asia:
top: Japan (29)
bottom: North Korea (172)
Oceania:
top: New Zealand (7)
bottom: Tonga (82)
Close-up on... Asia
Asia still has the biggest representation in the 10 countries at the bottom of the ranking. Most of them are dictatorships, but they also for the first time include Sri Lanka (165th), which has an elected government and where the press faces violence that is only too often organised by the state.
At the other end of the spectrum, New Zealand (7th), Australia (28th) and Japan (29th) - countries where democracy is deeply anchored - are in the top 30. New Zealand is one of the only two non-European countries in the top 20, the other being Canada (13th).
Some young democracies have advanced significantly in the past year. Maldives (104th) now has a flourishing independent press. The same goes for Bhutan (74th), where the first privately-owned news media are gradually establishing a distinct identity for themselves.
Afghanistan (156th), on the other hand, has fallen in the ranking because of violence, not only by the Taliban and the warlords’ henchmen but also by government representatives. Burma’s position was already bad and now is worse (170th). The crackdown launched after the September 2007 protests never ended : dozens of journalists have been arrested or threatened, while the military censorship is relentless. In Southeast Asia, Cambodia (126th) got a bad score as a result of a journalist’s murder that was probably instigated by a police officer, and the fact that control of the media was stepped up for the parliamentary elections. Vietnam (168th) fell six places as a result of a crackdown on the liberal media for being too probing in its reporting on corruption.
Major political changes took place in Pakistan (152nd) and Nepal (138th) but their effects on press freedom have not yet been felt. Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s departure as Pakistan’s president should benefit the press but the war with the Taliban is an even more serious problem for journalists.
The low ranking accorded to the United States outside of its own territory (119th) is due in part to the US military’s abuses in Afghanistan where a fixer for a Canadian TV network was arbitrarily detained for several months without any form of trial.
China (167th) continues to have a low ranking despite the efforts of many news media to elude the straightjacket of censorship and police controls. The number of arrests and cases of news surveillance and control by the political police and Propaganda Department is still very high and prevents the new Asian power from achieving any significant improvement.
Close-up on Maghreb / Middle East
The same six Middle East champions of repression that are near the bottom of the world press freedom index every year have confirmed their status this year again. Free expression continues to be no more than a dream in Iraq (158th), Syria (159th), Libya (160th), Saudi Arabia (161st), the Palestinian Territories (163rd) and Iran (166th). Journalists are subjected to relentless censorship and in some cases incredible violence in these countries. The Palestinian Territories have never before fallen so far in a year. The power struggle between the main factions has taken a disastrous toll on press freedom. The political split between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has been accompanied by a division of the media. The Israeli military’s responsibility for the death of a Palestinian cameraman employed by Reuters in April and the impunity granted to the soldier who fired the fatal shell account for Israel’s fall (149th outside its own territory) in the ranking.
In the Maghreb, Morocco (122nd) continues the fall it began two years ago. The decline in relations between government and press increased significantly with the jailing of journalist Mostapha Hurmatallah. A series of prosecutions of journalists and Internet users has shown that press freedom in Morocco stops at the doors of the royal palace.
Lebanon (66th) has risen 30 places as no journalist was on the list of victims of this year’s bombings. The Hezbollah-orchestrated offensive against certain media affiliated to the anti-Syrian opposition left no victims and trigged a wave of indignation in Lebanese society.
Africa:
top: Namibia (23)
bottom: Eritrea (173)
Close-up on... Africa
Some African leaders have understood the advantages their countries could derive from press freedom. Others have behaved like despots again this year. The continent’s best-placed countries continue by and large to be the same, with Namibia (23rd), Mali (31st), Cape Verde (36th) and Mauritius (47th) coming in the top 50. Some countries that were sorely tried by years of war or dictatorship are emerging from the depths to which they were plunged by violence. They include Liberia (51st), where some police officers still behave with deplorable brutality, and Togo (53rd), which is managing to adhere to acceptable democratic standards.
In democracies such as Botswana (66th) and Benin (70th), the climate between the government and the press often deteriorates, preventing these countries from attaining the positions they would otherwise deserve, given their overall political situation.
Senegal (86th) has fallen again in the ranking because of the government’s stubborn refusal to amend the press law and the often outrageous behaviour of some of Dakar’s newspapers. Senegalese journalists were imprisoned again this year. The bad surprise came from Mauritania (105th), where legislative reforms were clearly inadequate and the political culture continues to be marked by former President Ould Taya’s police-state practices.
There is no point in having a diverse and often insolent press unless you tolerate it without resorting to the security forces or an easily influenced legal system. In Central African Republic (85th), Burundi (94th) and Guinea (99th), for example, the least political unrest can send journalists to prison or at least the police station.
This year’s black spots in Africa were Kenya (97th), which fell 19 places as a result of post-electoral violence, and above all Niger (130th), which fell 41 places after a very trying year for journalists in Niamey and elsewhere. Reporting on the Tuareg uprising in the north of the country has become an absolute taboo for the government, especially in the run-up to the 2009 presidential election.
The African countries near the bottom of the ranking are also the same ones as usual. They include Gambia (137th), Democratic Republic of Congo (148th) and Zimbabwe (151st), where independent journalism requires courage, determination and an ability to put up with violence and injustice.
Finally, the gigantic posters to the glory of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema throughout “Africa’s Kuwait” say it all about the media situation in Equatorial Guinea (156th). But the continent’s most abused country is yet again Eritrea (173rd), last in the ranking for the second year running. President Issaias Afeworki clings to his deliberate choice of cruelty to the many journalists held incommunicado since 2001, and despotism as his method of governing a country whose citizens continue to flee into exile.
There... In RWB's view, that's how countries around the world relate to one another this year.
In some ways, it challenges generalisations and misconceptions. How many people would have assumed that there is more press freedom in Mali than in Italy? More press freedom in Kuweit than in Argentina?
It's been a tradition for me to start a thread on these rankings once a year, so here it is. :p Thoughts?