printVia The Wire: “The United States took a nasty drop in the World Press Freedom rankings, released on Wednesday by the media group Reporters Without Borders, falling 14 spots to the 46th best country for journalist freedoms. Of the 180 countries ranked, the home of the First Amendment now sits snuggled between Romania and Haiti.”
The U.S.’s jump in last year’s rankings was dismissed at the time as “deceptive progress,” and true to form, America has fallen back down the list. The rankings report blame the U.S.’s drop on its wide-ranging crackdown on whistleblowers, particularly Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning (who got a 35-year sentence for leaking documents), and the attempted 105-year sentence for Barrett Brown. To the American government, “The whistleblower is the enemy,” the report writes. Similarly, the subpoena of Associated Press phone records contributed to that drastic drop.
MORE.
I am a tad surprised at the pass the UK gets. Via RT:
RWB did not considered the most recent revelation about British intelligence, found practicing not just spying but actively using cyber-attacks to deal with such information disseminators as Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists, or that global media watchdogs are planning to investigate press freedom in the UK.
Also, Glenn Greenwald’s revelations about UK and US mainstream media being “devoted servants” of the intelligence agencies seemingly have not affected the rating.
Meanwhile WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with the freedom of information campaigner still being pursued by UK and Swedish justice.