US Ranks Surprisingly Low on List of "Free Press" Countries

Even I was surprised when I read this in the Vermont Guardian:

A survey by Freedom House has concluded that the United States ranked 24th last year for freedom of the press, tying with Barbados, Canada, Dominica, Estonia, and Latvia. The disappointing rank is due to “a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations,” Freedom House explained.

The survey, Freedom of the Press 2005: A Global Survey of Media Independence, was produced by asking journalists, researchers, and legal experts 50 questions. It is the 15th annual survey by Freedom House to assess the degree of freedom enjoyed by print, broadcast, and digital media.

Concerning the United States, a summary noted, “Doubts concerning official influence over media content emerged with the disclosures that several political commentators received grants from federal agencies, and that the Bush administration had significantly increased the practice of distributing government-produced news segments.”

Just 17 percent of people in the world live in countries that enjoy a free press, while 45 percent live where the press is not free, an increase of 2 percent in the past year, Freedom House said. Another 38 percent of the world population lives in countries with a “partly free” press, the organization said.

The freest nations in 2004 were Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. North Korea, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, and Turkmenistan were at the bottom of the list.