
2020 World Press Freedom Index - samizdis
https://rsf.org/en/2020-world-press-freedom-index-entering-decisive-decade-journalism-exacerbated-coronavirus
======
arcticbull
> Europe continues to be the most favourable continent for media freedom,
> despite oppressive policies in certain European Union and Balkan countries.
> [...] It is followed by the Americas – North, Central and South – even if
> the regional heavyweights, _the United States and Brazil, are becoming
> models of hostility towards the media_. [0]

Big oof. Just when we need the media the most.

This is honestly quite devastating for a country built on the freedom of the
press.

At least we've still got access to European news in the US. And Canadian news
(16th), which is at least regional and has a strong focus on the US (45th).
The US of course sits squarely between the Organization of East Caribbean
States and Papua New Guinea. [1]

> Press freedom in the United States continued to suffer during President
> Donald Trump’s third year in office. Arrests, physical assaults, public
> denigration and the harassment of journalists continued in 2019, though the
> numbers of journalists arrested and assaulted were slightly lower than the
> year prior.

> Much of that ire has come from President Trump and his associates in the
> federal government, who have demonstrated the United States is no longer a
> champion of press freedom at home or abroad. [2]

Spicy.

[0] [https://rsf.org/en/2020-world-press-freedom-index-
entering-d...](https://rsf.org/en/2020-world-press-freedom-index-entering-
decisive-decade-journalism-exacerbated-coronavirus)

[1] [https://rsf.org/en/ranking](https://rsf.org/en/ranking)

[2] [https://rsf.org/en/united-states](https://rsf.org/en/united-states)

~~~
s9w
I can't find those quotes on that site or anywhere on the net

~~~
arcticbull
The first block quote is from the article under the section "The Index region
by region".

For the second quote, I just drilled down into their rankings, then into the
US page. References added.

I guess they need better SEO huh?

------
teruakohatu
The actual rankings are here:

[https://rsf.org/en/ranking](https://rsf.org/en/ranking)

It will be interesting to see how the rankings change next year. In my
country, ranked 9th, non-daily publications were banned from operating during
lockdown. I expect we will drop a few places.

------
samizdis
> There is a clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in
> response to the coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index.

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einpoklum
The ranking is methodologically problematic in its being relative. If press
freedom is curtailed in many countries around the world, their rankings may
barely drop - since others "dropped" as well, and since most countries may be
above or below them both before and after the change. Same thing for
improvement in press freedom.

~~~
arcticbull
Luckily we've got the central limit theorem on our side, since we've got
180-ish entries, it's going to approximate a standard normal distribution.

~~~
einpoklum
> Luckily we've got the central limit theorem on our side

No, we don't. States are not IID samples.

~~~
arcticbull
Why not!

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s9w
Those plots are spectacularly bad.

~~~
arcticbull
Indeed, skip the plots and go for the list:
[https://rsf.org/en/ranking](https://rsf.org/en/ranking)

