The Null Device

Worldwide Press Freedom Index

RSF (that's Reporters Sans Frontières, not the I'm Too Sexy mob) release the first worldwide press freedom index. Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands share the first place, while the world's least free press is, unsurprisingly, in North Korea. Australia is at #12, alongside Belgium, and ahead of the US (#17) which is ahead of the UK (#21, jointly with Benin and Uruguay). Italy has the worst ranking in the EU (#40), mostly thanks to the Berlusconi government doing to the state-run media what Alston could only dream of doing to the ABC. (via 1.0)

There are 2 comments on "Worldwide Press Freedom Index":

Posted by: Ben
http://leviathan.weblogs.com
Thu Sep 4 08:34:35 2003

How the fuck can Australia be rated as having a freer press than the USA? Or is the chart topside-down?

Posted by: mark
http://donotuselifts.net/
Thu Sep 4 15:01:05 2003

I'm guessing they're not just regarding "free" as in "free from governmental interference", but "free" as in "editorial freedom".

And let's face it. For all Australia's restrictions on free speech (higher standard for what constitutes protected speech, harder to defend against defamation suits...), the State broadcaster is given a pretty free reign, and the commercial press, while under the thumb of business, are still somewhat freeer than that of America (or so I'm told :-))

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