We are #1 or even #2 in freedom of the press we are #

[mesue]

Did you know that the freedom of the press is actually numbered according to how free the press is in each country to report, currently our so called free press is rated at #44.
So much for the liberal press idea, that is one that the politicians are selling you, wake up they are not liberal they are not even free to do their jobs. The news you receive is what they the station owners and the government wants you to know, wake up America your news is censored.

This article says we fell over 20 places due to the Judith Miller incarceration but that means that last year we scored in the teens or the twenties, In 2003 we scored number 31st.
Seriously with numbers like these can we still continue to use the term free press? Below is an exccerpt of the article also if you go there it has the list of countries. Sad here where we say freedom of the press is important and helps keep us free, we scored with a 44.

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554

Some Western democracies slipped down the Index. The United States (44th) fell more than 20 places, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and legal moves undermining the privacy of journalistic sources. Canada (21st) also dropped several places due to decisions that weakened the privacy of sources and sometimes turned journalists into “court auxiliaries.” France (30th) also slipped, largely because of searches of media offices, interrogations of journalists and introduction of new press offences.

At the top of the Index once again are northern European countries Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands, where robust press freedom is firmly established. The top 10 countries are all European. New Zealand (12th), Trinidad and Tobago (12th), Benin (25th) and South Korea (34th) are the highest-ranked countries in other continents.

[hblueeyes]

This is nothing new. I figured this out the first time I was gathering information to vote. I was 18 and in the military. News is even less free there. That was 25+ years ago.

Me

[stresseater]

Maybe on the free to make it up as you go along list. This, from the French is about as funny as Chiroc standing up there shaking his fist saying we will prosacute those who are rioting. Smacks of Bagdad Bob to me. :) :rolleyes: ;) :D :)

[mesue]

To some of us that is nothing new but to many in this country they think we have a totally free press (if only it were so, I would love to be posting that here) and we don't. I guess the only way to change things is to make sure everyone knows.

[mesue]

Maybe on the free to make it up as you go along list. This, from the French is about as funny as Chiroc standing up there shaking his fist saying we will prosacute those who are rioting. Smacks of Bagdad Bob to me. :) :rolleyes: ;) :D :)

This is not from the French, they rank at # 30. Speaking of doublespeaking, what about Bush and Cheney screaming their bringing democracy and freedom and then trying to make torture legal.

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=280
Reporters Without Borders is an association officially recognised as serving the public interest

More than a third of the world’s people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Reporters Without Borders works constantly to restore their right to be informed. Fourty-two media professionals lost their lives in 2003 for doing what they were paid to do — keeping us informed. Today, more than 130 journalists around the world are in prison simply for doing their job. In Nepal, Eritrea and China, they can spend years in jail just for using the "wrong" word or photo. Reporters Without Borders believes imprisoning or killing a journalist is like eliminating a key witness and threatens everyone’s right to be informed. It has been fighting such practices for more than 18 years.

[stresseater]

If scratched a little harder than the surface this "organization" bleeds whine(a freudian slip ;) ) and cheese. Income and Expenditures (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10594)
The first sentance was the tip off.
Income and expenditure The Reporters Without Borders budget in 2004 was €3,235,928 and the financial situation remained steady. Self-generated funds increased and the organisation achieved a surplus while substantially expanding its activities Then I scan down to the corporate and private sponsers and find.....
Public grants The share of this in the total budget fell to 19% in 2004 (from 27% in 2003).

This money came from :

French government ministries : Prime minister’s office, ministries of foreign affairs, culture and communication.
Other public body : The Intergovernmental Agency for French-Speaking Countries.
European Union : A project funded (until 2004) by the European Commission to defend journalists imprisoned in Asia and ACP countries.
Private donors

This budget share of this money, from French and foreign private institutions, fell slightly in 2004 to (from 12% in 2003).

Donors included :

Private companies : Sanofi-Synthelabo, FNAC, CFAO, Beaume et Mercier, le Bon Marché, Fujifilm, Atlas publishers and the Caisse des Dépôts.
Company foundations : La Fondation EDF.
The media : Télérama and Cadena Ser (to fund the Annual Report on press freedom).
French private bodies : La Fondation de France (for the Reporters Without Borders Prize).
Foreign private bodies : The Open Society Institute (for a project to fight impunity) and the Center for Free Cuba (to help Cuban journalists in prison and their families). They provide 1.9% (the Open Society Institute) and 1.3% (the Center for Free Cuba) of our total funding Looks predominatly French to me. :D ;) :) I intentionally skipped the rolley eyes smiley because I want you to know I usually don't attack sources but this one is pretty blatent in thier bias.
From the main page I clicked the link to see what the good old USA had going on and found a lot of complaining about the Judith Miller case and there was also this about Wen Ho Lee.....
James Risen, of the New York Times, Bob Drogin, of the Los Angeles Times, H. Josef Hebert, of the Associated Press (AP), and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN but now with ABC, had already been sentenced by the same jurisdiction but by a restricted panel on 28 June 2005.
The four journalists reported on the case of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was accused but later cleared of espionage. He subsequently began a lawsuit against the US government, which was suspected of leaking the charges against him to the press.

Questioned by Wen Ho Lee’s lawyer between 18 December 2003 and 8 January 2004, the journalists confirmed they had been given the information but refused to give its origin, citing the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
So a man who's life is ruined isn't allowed to know who did it. Granted I don't know much about this particular case (I will check into it though) but that doesn't sound right. Courts have ruled over and over that the protection of sources is not absolute. If it were we would have onair reporters typing thier own documents and saying honest some guy I can't say who ... :D gave em to me. ;)

[mesue]

Great research! Well the website does have to be based somewheres and get funding from someone but with them putting France at 30, I seriously doubt they are being that biased.

Judith Miller was protecting Scooter Libby a member of the Bush Administration, Cheney's right hand man. I am sure you know I am no fan of the Bush Administration. Miller protected the identity of the person who gave her information and revealed to her the identity of a covert operative within the CIA. IMO it was the wrong thing for anyone in the Bush Administration or any other Administration to do but the fact is there was a promised confidentiality there. I applaud her for not revealing her source, as I do the journalists in the above situation you mentioned.

It is not the journalists who are at fault, it is the people who leaked that type of info in the first place. Valerie Plames identity as a CIA agent was top secret and Libby should have known that and it should never have been revealed, to her credit Judith Miller did not reveal the woman's identity and if I understand correctly, did not even report on it.

Without people being able to feel secure in the knowledge that their identity is being kept off the record and protected we would be in even worse shape than now. I don't like either situation for it hurt the people who were the innocents in all this but a journalist's sources must be protected if we are to be able to get to the truth at all, we must allow the journalists to protect their sources.

On the other hand if the journalist can be proven to be involved in knowing and assisting in willingly libeling that person then they should be prosecuted for for their actions against that person. For instance IMO the journaists who did reveal this CIA's agents identity, if they did know at the time they revealed it, that it was top secret and a matter of national security, then by all means they should have to face charges for it themselves.

[LuvBigRip]

Great research! Well the website does have to be based somewheres and get funding from someone but with them putting France at 30, I seriously doubt they are being that biased.
.
I love it, a post about media and their bias, the lack of freedom, yet we believe the article as truth

[mesue]

I do believe it since the rating is done by reporters who are rating it based on certain concrete criteria like how difficult it is to do their work in each country, how many arrests or deaths there are of journalists in each country, or how much the news is censored by governments or corporations with clout.

Six corporations own all our media, even contol how much air time our political candidates get in the news or how they are portrayed. Think of Howard Dean and that little clip they continued to show for weeks of him yelling, the reporters made fun of him while they showed it, tell me these people don't use their networks as a means of manipulating the votes. Most of the owners are registered republicans and have lots of different investments, one of them owns companies making a lot of money off of this war.
If you have bothered watching some of the news broadcasts that are not done by the corporate owned media you would be shocked at the difference, stories about things that really affect us, like the war, the cost of living, whats going on in the government and other countries. One morning while watching a corporate own news cast I watched for 10 minutes I saw the journalists discussing Tom Cruises appearance on Oprah and the famous jumping on the couch and Michael Jackson's trial and commercial after commercial and that was it, this was not an entertainment monment in the news, it was the news. This is stuff you used to see on the entertainment networks, now they are calling it news. The closest they have come to real journalism in years is their reports on the Katrina catastrophe.

[LuvBigRip]

Ok, so using the logic that those who are in the industry should do the ratings, I assume you agree with the Bush administration running their own investigation into the administration. (I am a Republican and even I think that it a bad idea) Or the CIA running the investigation of intellegence failures.

Of course most news are corporate owned and controlled, but the idea that "independent" news sources are truly independent is ludicrous. Funding comes from somewhere, and rarely is it centric in nature. Only those to the far left or right are passionate enough about getting their message out. Most people in the center carry enough apathy to just not care. Only if they are confronted with something that personally affects them do they care enough to get up off their couch and do or say something.

I agree that Tom Cruises foray into mental psychosis is hardly newsworthy, but I fail to see how the trail of a pedophile (not guilty verdict or not) is not news. Just because it is someone in entertainment, crimes against children is one of importance.

Edited to add: While Katrina is a disaster of epic preportion, I wonder how much less of a disaster it would have been if the people of New Orleans would have taken the 5 days warning time to prepare with 72 hours of food and water, or better yet, just leave. I also have to wonder if the local government had not been sending out false information of 10,000 deaths, murders galore and had actually patrolled the streets. Too bad the media, which you say did such a great job, reported the "facts" without actual proof.

[Njean31]

Edited to add: While Katrina is a disaster of epic preportion, I wonder how much less of a disaster it would have been if the people of New Orleans would have taken the 5 days warning time to prepare with 72 hours of food and water, or better yet, just leave. I also have to wonder if the local government had not been sending out false information of 10,000 deaths, murders galore and had actually patrolled the streets. Too bad the media, which you say did such a great job, reported the "facts" without actual proof.


they sure did :D

[mesue]

I am the one that put in my comments that 6 corporations owns your media, not reporters without borders. I don't know where you got the idea that this is a group of reporters investigating themselves and their own works.
Reporters without borders rates countries based on a set criteria not on how well they the journalists are doing their jobs at keeping the country informed.
They rate countries based on whether journalists are censored by the government in their work, on whether journalists are imprisoned while trying to do their work, on whether journalists are murdered while trying to do their work.


http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=280
Reporters Without Borders is an association officially recognised as serving the public interest

More than a third of the world’s people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Reporters Without Borders works constantly to restore their right to be informed. Fourty-two media professionals lost their lives in 2003 for doing what they were paid to do — keeping us informed. Today, more than 130 journalists around the world are in prison simply for doing their job. In Nepal, Eritrea and China, they can spend years in jail just for using the "wrong" word or photo. Reporters Without Borders believes imprisoning or killing a journalist is like eliminating a key witness and threatens everyone’s right to be informed. It has been fighting such practices for more than 18 years.

Defending press freedom... every day

Reporters Without Borders, kept on constant alert via its network of over 100 correspondents, rigorously condemns any attack on press freedom world-wide by keeping the media and public opinion informed through press releases and public-awareness campaigns.
The association defends journalists and other media contributors and professionals who have been imprisoned or persecuted for doing their work. It speaks out against the abusive treatment and torture that is still common practice in many countries.
The organisation supports journalists who are being threatened in their own countries and provides financial and other types of support to their needy families.
Reporters Without Borders is fighting to reduce the use of censorship and to oppose laws designed to restrict press freedom.
The association is also working to improve the safety of journalists world-wide, particularly in war zones. It is committed to assist in the rebuilding of media groups and to provide financial and material support to news staffs experiencing hardships.
Finally, since January 2002, when it created the Damocles Network, Reporters Without Borders acquired a judicial arm. In order to ensure that murderers and torturers of journalists are brought to trial, the Network provides victims with legal services and represents them before the competent national and international courts, so that proper judicial procedures can be implemented.

[mesue]

As to anyone who is blaming the Katrina victims, I feel sorry for you. Many of those people had resources but still could not get out. Many of them were so poor they had no money for anything and no way out.