US plummets on World Press Freedom Index, from 27th to 47th | Hacker News Reader

US plummets on World Press Freedom Index, from 27th to 47th

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92 pointsgasull45 comments

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.

How many reporters were beaten in Hungary?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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!

I actually find the discussion on Slashdot of much higher quality than this one.

There is a broader audience on Slashdot.

Flagged. Please keep things like this on reddit.

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

Australia has very little in the way of protests and the only uprising we had was 150 years ago... a mere thirty died.

Yet we've slumped to 30th in the ranking.

Besides, Papua New Guinea has armed separatists, plus Port Moresby is one of the murder capitals of the world, yet it's 10 positions higher than the US.

Why is Australia ranked low for press freedomthen? The only controversial thing I can thing of in Australia is the mining industry. Do you all have protesters against the mining industry...thinking of Midnight Oil's "Blue Sky Mine"

"In Australia (30th), the media were subjected to investigations and criticism by the authorities, and were denied access to information" according to the article. Personally, I don't see why the authorities have any less right to criticize the media than media have to criticize authorities. I don't think the mining industry has anything to do with it.

The public has done a bizarre about-turn on the mining tax. When it was introduced, the frothing middle-Australians were saying "How dare you bring down those who have brought prosperity to our nation!?". In the intervening years it's become apparent that those mining profits are largely going to overseas owners, yet still screw up the rest of our economy ("two-speed economy" - the rest of the economy is growing, but the mining makes our dollar grow faster yet...). Now middle Australia is whining that the gummint didn't tax those greedy miners enough, they're screwing us over and we aren't getting our cut. One of those times you actually feel sorry for the politicians.

That's off-topic though - the mining tax has left public discourse in the last year, but there's lots of noise about internet content filtering, plus according to the page about Australia on the press freedom index, there's lots of obsfucation at the government level when it comes to requests for information. There's not much in the way of protesting, but there were things like reporters working on the wikileaks story having their work blocked.

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.

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.

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

Link?

Occupiers in Seattle and Oakland have broken into homes. There is also a post by a Seattle Occupy organiser who boasts about running around disrupting traffic:

"Get the music blaring and then march aimlessly, blocking traffic the whole way, for hours" *

I support the NYC Occupiers (I live in NYC) because they voice their cause while trying to minimize collateral disruption. If the NYC Occupiers were causing random destruction I would find it difficult to continue empathising.

The police should be gentler in their force escalation by issuing plenty of warnings and then gently arresting for short detainment (as a cool-down). But as another comment mentions, sometimes their hands are forced, e.g. SF and Seattle protesters hurling bricks. I would prefer an early crackdown than let the dynamic spiral beyond legitimacy as it did in London.

Temporary fix to the press problem may be the press wearing clearly identifying clothing. That dampens the police's excuse that they blend in with the hooligans (every protest, regardless of how legitimate, will attract its unfair share of these).

*http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-o...

Disrupting traffic is an essential element of any peaceful protest you don't want ignored. For the most part it makes people angry, but at least they notice you instead of drive right past with their protester blinders on.

Breaking into homes and property destruction can in no way be regarded as peaceful protest. However, I don't see how you draw the connection in your first paragraph between breaking into homes and disrupting traffic. I do wonder what led people to break into homes in those settings, and why they're calling themselves (or others are calling them) Occupiers.

As for the press wearing distinguishing clothing, that strikes me as something that is ostensibly for a good cause, but is used for evil. For example, if reporters are wearing identifying clothing, that either gives the police an easier time removing all reporters before doing whatever it is they do, or gives protesters an easy way of masquerading as reporters to get greater access.

Disrupting traffic is a "rally the base" move. It energises supporters but pisses of moderates - note how the Seattle mayor had to break his support for the protesters following their act. Since the protesters' actions have material negative externalities they trigger a necessary cost-benefit analysis. I for one lose respect for someone who thinks they have to spit in my face to get my attention.

I agree regarding identifying press, but more so in terms of protesters donning it and this diluting the effect. I don't think the US is at the point of cattle-herding journalists yet.

I agree regarding identifying press, but more so in terms of protesters donning it and this diluting the effect. I don't think the US is at the point of cattle-herding journalists yet.

In general, probably not, but I think we've already had enough exceptional cases to take notice. I seem to recall seeing a video of a reporter at a pre-Occupy protest surrounded by police and arrested in a parking lot, and reading about a few other cases where reporters were told by police to leave. I don't want to make a strong argument one way or the other, and this thread's probably long enough, so I'm not going to take the time to look up sources.

You don't have the right to be noticed since it would imply an obligation on others to notice you.

And honestly if you purposely block traffic, I won't fault a driver for forcing him past, even if it means that he runs you down.

Honestly, I hate disruptions to traffic as much as anybody, and it is illegal, but IMO our right to get home from work on time doesn't supersede the right of the downtrodden to petition the government for a redress of grievances in the only way left to them to get noticed. Note that I'm referring to protests in general, not Occupy in specific.

I was just trying to make the point, restrictions of the press are usually in response to reporting on the crackdown of protesters as was even stated in the article itself. For this I am losing a karma point every 15 minutes

I only commented on the ranking methodology. As for politics. We have 120 different countries on here with differing experiences; I'm not touching that issue on this thread

I think that if you had phrased your comment as something like "Shouldn't we try to avoid ranking systems that penalize countries that happen to be having a lot of political protests in a given year?" It wasn't at all obvious to me that the point of your comment was the ranking methodology, as opposed to trying to blame the protesters for the decrease in ranking or just trolling.

Of course you're allowed to your opinion. It's just that people tend to downvote the really unintelligent ones that don't actually add to the discussion a lot. I'm sure that if you'd have given arguments for your statement instead of wording it as a brainless and inflammatory one-liner, people might have given you the same courtesy instead of immediately reaching for the downvote button.

And in my opinion, that's a good thing. When there are no arguments, not even a statement of what exactly your point is, inviting discussion and what you say happens to be exceptionally uninformed and moronic, then yes, have at it with the downvotes because I don't need to read it. If the opinion would have any value whatsoever, somebody else is going to make it in an informed manner and back it with arguments.

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

FWIW:

Let's assume, for the sake of argument you intended to say "violent protests" (regardless which side to blame for the violence, gov or protestors) as otherwise your statement is simply factually incorrect and any discussion may as well end here.

Assuming that, you're (deliberately?) confusing cause and effect:

Being high on the list gives rise to less (violent) protests and uprisings in your country.

And suddenly, given that people value freedom as one of the highest things, and will go through great lengths to achieve it, that makes perfect sense.

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.

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.

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.

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

In a free country, should it matter?

I don't know who they were referring to in the report, although you could probably contact them to inquire about the specifics.

But just by quickly searching Google I found quite a few instances in which real reporters were harmed or arrested: A WNYW Fox photographer (Roy Isen) was maced/attacked with a baton, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photographer (Kristyna Wentz-Graff) was arrested despite her credentials hanging from her neck, an RT television reporter (Lucy Kafanov) was struck with a baton, a journalist in TN (Jonathan Meador) was arrested. John Farley (a reporter for WNET in NY) was arrested. That's just from 5 minutes of searching, so it wouldn't surprise me if the 25 figure only represented professionals.

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.

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

Nope. I'm saying that when you become part of a mob, you aren't reporting a story -- you are part of it.

I got stuck in the middle of a performance of my local "occupy" movement's protest theater when walking home from work. The local police force in my city had orders to avoid provocation and violence with the protestors, and they followed those orders.

But the protestors with assistance with professional agitators from labor groups like the CWA weren't happy about that. They tried to pull a policeman off of his horse. They ran into the street during rush hour with tents. (i was nearly run down by a swerving bus.)

The first amendment doesn't give you the right to riot. It doesn't give you a right to seize public parks for your private use. Creating mayhem to attract TV cameras isn't free speech -- it's anarchy.

You get pity upvotes, but I do disagree.

Law enforcement in this country has become increasingly uncomfortable with the spread of information concerning it - whether that information is propagated by twitter, "bona-fide" journalists, or folks testing out their new camera[phone]. Every group of people has the right to do PR, without interference from the government - period. The gov't doesn't get to say "oh, but they were /really/ crazy". Don't care. They were within their rights, and you beat them.

Worse still, we have a promulgation of non-police "law enforcement" agencies acting more like a branch of the military operating within the borders as a national police force. I do not want to see the DHS's logo on a copyright take-down notice. I do not want the TSA searching people. The FBI is properly regulated - that's /why/ they're less efficient. It's not a flaw, it's by design. Creating the DHS and the TSA because the FBI has its hands tied by Congress was just despicable.

(My apologies if this is something of a rant - I'm getting frustrated with people piking at technicalities and ignoring the basic fact that civil liberties are being rapidly destroyed.)

http://www.savethenews.org/sites/savethenews.org/files/Aei_Y...

Oh look... A press badge and a real camera.

"I'm not aware of it."

Open your eyes.

> If cops somewhere else are cracking the heads of reporters (vs. participants), I'm not aware of it.

Cracking the heads of participants is perfectly fine then? Classy.

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