3rd May 2020 - World Press Freedom Day

Before reading any further just return to the graph at the header. It shows over 5 years where a country has been ranked by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in terms of press freedom against other countries A green bar shows improvement year on year and a red bar shows deterioration. Hold that image and read on.

Reporters Without Borders

RSF publish an annual index that measures the levels of press freedom in 180 countries which determines their individual ranking. Through a survey RSF collect quantitative data such as number of journalists arrested and recorded cases of violence against journalists. They also collect qualitative information on press pluralism, transparency, freedom of access to information and censorship. Both sets of information are combined to produce a score. The lower a country scores the higher it is placed in the table. A perfect score being ‘zero’ which no one country has achieved. The worst score in 2019 being for Turkmenistan with 85.4 and their ranking is 180th.

The mystery country

The country whose rankings are shown in the chart above had the following qualitative comment on the RSF website:

“…..home of the world’s first press freedom laws from 1776, still ranks among the very top when it comes to media independence. The law enshrines not only freedom of the press….also the public right to access state held documents”.

A highly complimentary report but have you worked which country it applies to? Wherever you are reading this you would hope it is your own home country that is achieving these standards. Countries such as Canada, USA, Ireland, Australia, The Netherlands or Britain. We all want to think our country is the best however it is being measured and compared to others.

These rankings are for Sweden. Never out the top ten and number for the last five years and never out of the top twenty for the last eighteen years.

Where is Britain in this press freedom league?

The world rankings in 2019 for the suggested countries were Canada (19th), USA (48th), Ireland (15th), Australia (21st) and Britain, wait for it, 33rd. Yes, that is Britain’s placing in the world rankings for press freedom in 2019. Before I accessed this report, I believed best of my country in terms of press freedom but not anymore; now I know it is in 33rd position.

The header for the qualitative commentary for Britain is:

“A worrying trend”

That is the type of comment that should be setting off alarm bells for anyone concerned about this basic human right?

The commentary continues:

“Despite improvements in some areas and the presence of a robust independent media the UK remained one of the worst ranked Western European countries in the World Press Freedom Index”.

The same report describes “a heavy-handed approach” to the press that is used in the interests of national security. It goes on to mention the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 (aka The Snoopers Charter) which in their opinion does not give enough protection from prosecution for whistle blowers, journalists and their sources within a culture of mass surveillance has violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

Britain is in no position to be proud of or complacent about press freedom, especially when countries such as Namibia (23rd), Uruguay (19th), Jamaica (8th) and Suriname (20th) that would not normally be associated with fully functioning democracies are higher up the league in 2019.

For journalism to function effectively as the “fourth estate” it must be able work within an environment in which it can obtain information freely, publish that information without the hindrance of censorship. To give a voice to the voiceless and to hold those in power to account for their decisions. The very decisions that affect the societies whose best interests they are supposed to be representing.

If it wasn’t for a free press President Nixon would have served to full terms in the White House. It was Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post who investigated the trail from what appeared to be a break in at Democrat headquarters that went to the Oval Office; Watergate. If it wasn’t for the diligence and persistence of the journalists Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Helen Brooke working with The Telegraph in the UK MP’s expenses would continue to be paid without public scrutiny and accountability; Duck Gate.

Never more so than during the current pandemic have we needed a press that is free to push for answers that their readers want to ask and publish stories their readers want to read.