
US plummets on World Press Freedom Index, from 27th to 47th - gasull
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/26/2315249/us-plummets-on-world-press-freedom-ranking
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Zakharov
This strikes me as a bit odd:

 _"Hungary fell 17 rungs to 40th place after adopting a law giving the ruling
party direct control over the media and amending its constitution in
December."_

 _"In the space of two months in the United States, more than 25 were
subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police"_ reducing the US to
47th place.

~~~
burgerbrain
How many reporters were _beaten_ in Hungary?

Really no need to pass laws restricting reporters when you can just hit them
instead.

~~~
Zakharov
Obviously, restricting press freedom with laws and with beatings are both bad.
However, I don't think 25 beatings in a country as large as the U.S.
constitutes a systematic or widespread attack on press freedom.

~~~
burgerbrain
The thought that it's not systematic disturbs me even more.

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neilk
It should be noted that they changed their algorithm this year. They are
giving more weight to good actions.

So this change in ranking is partially due to good countries getting more
credit for stuff they were already doing, as well as new bad actions in the
USA.

Nothing to feel proud about as this probably means the USA would have ranked
pretty low anyway in 2010, were it calculated by 2011 standards.

------
InclinedPlane
I did not personally agree with the political goals of the occupy protests.
Moreover, many of those protests were marred by violence from protesters or
from folks just finding an opportunity for mayhem.

However, none of that excuses the very real abuses of power by police that
occurred. Non-violent protesters were beaten and arrested. Reporters were
harassed, abused, and prevented from covering events by police. Many
mainstream reporters simply agreed to comply with police requests to stay out
of an area and avoid covering the protests and arrests.

I am ashamed for my country in the way these protests evolved and in the
police and critical response to them. Tribalism is still alive and well in
this country, the response one has to abuse of power and the support one has
for legal protections of individual liberty should have absolutely nothing to
do with whether or not one shares a cultural or social bond with the victim. I
have a feeling that if the ACLU attempted to defend the free speech rights of
neo-NAZIs today they would receive even less public support than they did 4
decades ago.

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Zigurd
The first two top-level comments I see here amount to:

a) Beating bloggers, especially hippies, doesn't count

b) If we had only prevented the protests, we'd be doing better

Still more reasons America is in a slump in these rankings

~~~
jquery
Explaining why the methodology used by the "press freedom index" is solid
instead of making ad-hominem attacks would go a lot further in winning people
over.

~~~
tripzilch
> Explaining why the methodology used by the "press freedom index" is solid
> instead of making ad-hominem attacks would go a lot further in winning
> people over.

Why, do you find its methodology hard to understand?

I'll keep that in mind when evaluating the merit of your comments elsewhere in
this thread ... "does not actually understand the methodology used in the
article".

Talk about quality of discussion, indeed!

------
tkahn6
Flagged. _Please_ keep things like this on reddit.

------
mohene1
The key seems to be, in order to be high on the list do not have protests and
uprisings in your country.

~~~
hristov
Or you can have protests but not use force against them. Or more specifically
do not use force against the journalists. Of course one goes with the other,
if you want to beat up some peaceful protesters you have to beat up the
journalists covering your original beating too.

The occupy protests were peaceful and they generally did not break shops and
vandalize things. There was no reason to treat them that way.

~~~
jquery
I'm sorry, the Occupy protests have NOT been peaceful. Just last week in SF, a
couple police officers ended up in the hospital. Nevermind the amount of
property they managed to trash. They were also lucky they didn't kill anyone,
they were throwing bricks and objects off an abandoned hotel near where I
live.

~~~
Symmetry
Upvoted (back to 1) for being able to give an example, but though there have
been a few violent incidents associated with Occupy, for the most part they've
been remarkably restrained - more so than I would have guessed. To the extent
that police violence is justified by what Occupiers do we should ignore it[1],
but was a single one of those 25 incidents of violence against reporters
justified? Certainly few if any.

[1] e.g. if you surround a group of police and tell them you aren't going to
let them leave until they release their prisoners, I'm not going to cry over
you getting tear-gassed. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y>

------
Duff
This is a stunt that does more to take away from the legitmacy of Reporters
Without Borders than anything else.

If they dropped the US's press freemdom ranking because of the cozy
relationships between government officials and mainstream media, or the
manipulative behavior of the government towards the press, or any of a dozen
other factors, I'd be interested.

But they didn't -- instead, they made some vague remark about the oppression
of the occupy people. The occupy movement is a joke that is either imploding
or getting hijacked by the local activist union movements.

~~~
sounddust
The report states that there were over 25 instances in a two-month period in
which journalists in the US were beaten and/or arrested while on the job, with
charges such as "public nuisance." That seems pretty clear to me, and
consistent with their reasoning for ranking other countries.

~~~
Duff
Are you referring to bona-fide journalists, or the advocates with
cameraphones?

I got stuck in the middle of our local occupy grop as they broke up and did a
spontaneous march through rush hour traffic when I was walking to the bus. The
newspaper and other reporters were clearly distinguishable from the mob, but
there were plenty of wannabe "journalists" broadcasting from cameraphones.
Those folks were more like PR flacks than journalists. I saw similar stuff in
NYC as well.

I'm speaking from the perspective of my experience. If cops somewhere else are
cracking the heads of reporters (vs. participants), I'm not aware of it.

~~~
vacri
So you're saying that 'wannabes' shouldn't have the same freedom of speech,
and implying that it's okay to beat or arrest them?

Sounds like a shining beacon of free speech to me.

~~~
Zakharov
He's saying that if someone's throwing bricks or similar, it doesn't matter
whether or not they've got a cameraphone.

