For example, they give Malaysia 50, the highest score while giving 30 to France. Don't get me wrong, I love that country but it has rigged elections, no real freedom of press (Malaysia Kini an opposition website was censored during some of the elections by blocking their DNS), politicians from the opposition are imprisoned on spurious charges (Anwar for example) and corruption is endemic.
Japan which also has 50 is not a shining example of Press freedom, it's a country where innocent until proven guilty doesn't really hold (more than 99% conviction rate) and where police can detain someone for 3 weeks without charges being filled.
That said, I agree that France doesn't deserve the top score either due to new surveillance laws following terrorist attacks and due to the state of their prisons compared to the rest of EU but they shouldn't be ranked lower in Freedom than Japan and Malaysia.
Here's the text of how they describe how they calculate the Freedom Index they use for their ranking:
The ability of citizens to live freely is responsible for 10% of each country’s total
ranking. We believe that freedom of speech and of the press is a good thing, and
imposing laws on non-resident citizens is generally a bad idea. This index relied on
data regarding mandatory military service, government spying programs,
incarceration rate, and laws targeting non-resident citizens (such as the United
States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), as well as the World Press Freedom Index
and Economic Freedom Index to determine how free citizens of each country are,
particularly non-resident citizens. Each country was assigned a score from 10 to 50
based on our proprietary blend of these factors, with 10 being the least free and 50
being the most free.
I thought this particular freedom index only related to travel, e.g whether coming and going is easy, whether you are taxed for income earned abroad and so on?
They have multiple factor in their ranking. One of them is the freedom index which is described as:
The ability of citizens to live freely is responsible for 10% of each country’s total
ranking. We believe that freedom of speech and of the press is a good thing, and
imposing laws on non-resident citizens is generally a bad idea. This index relied on
data regarding mandatory military service, government spying programs,
incarceration rate, and laws targeting non-resident citizens (such as the United
States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), as well as the World Press Freedom Index
and Economic Freedom Index to determine how free citizens of each country are,
particularly non-resident citizens. Each country was assigned a score from 10 to 50
based on our proprietary blend of these factors, with 10 being the least free and 50
being the most free.
For example, they give Malaysia 50, the highest score while giving 30 to France. Don't get me wrong, I love that country but it has rigged elections, no real freedom of press (Malaysia Kini an opposition website was censored during some of the elections by blocking their DNS), politicians from the opposition are imprisoned on spurious charges (Anwar for example) and corruption is endemic.
Japan which also has 50 is not a shining example of Press freedom, it's a country where innocent until proven guilty doesn't really hold (more than 99% conviction rate) and where police can detain someone for 3 weeks without charges being filled.
That said, I agree that France doesn't deserve the top score either due to new surveillance laws following terrorist attacks and due to the state of their prisons compared to the rest of EU but they shouldn't be ranked lower in Freedom than Japan and Malaysia.
Here's the text of how they describe how they calculate the Freedom Index they use for their ranking: