Congrats Everyone: U.S. Now Ranked 64th In Global Press Freedom

from the look-mom,-we’re-stupid! dept

Good news if you really enjoy corporatism, autocracy, propaganda and a violently misinformed electorate!

The U.S. has fallen to sixty-fourth place (now below Ukraine) in the annual Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. As corrupt, oligarch-coddled authoritarians the world over continue to enjoy their moment in the sun, journalism (aka the “enemy of the people”) continues to be violently disassembled by a lazy coalition of fascist ideology and corporatism.

From the latest report (see the full interactive index):

“For the first time in the history of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, over half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. In 25 years, the average score of all 180 countries and territories surveyed in the Index has never been so low.”

The study notes that in 2002, 20% of the global population lived in a country where the state of press freedom was categorized as “good.” A quarter century later, less than 1% of the world’s population lives in a country that falls under this category.

In the U.S., Trump-friendly oligarchs like Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are gobbling up the remnants of dying traditional media and newer social media platforms alike, keen on turning both into oligarch and autocrat friendly agitprop machines. All while Trump destroys whatever was left of public media, and endlessly harasses companies that platform basic journalism and comedy.

At the same time, journalism layoffs continue to be rampant at the hands of corporate media giants dead set on destroying whatever was left of media consolidation limits, public interest reporting, and even archival and journalistic history. The result is a lazy, ad-driven, badly automated engagement ouroborus where anything serving the public interest is a distant and fleeting consideration.

The better performers in the index include Norway, Finland (where they teach kids media literacy and how to identify propaganda starting at the age of three), Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia. While decidedly smaller with vast differences, such countries have strange perks like functional public media and an operational social safety net not yet hollowed out by grotesque levels of corruption.

From the study:

“In the United States (which ranks 64th out of 180 countries and territories) journalists who were already fighting against economic headwinds and dealing with a crisis of public trust—among other challenges—now also contend with President Donald Trump’s systematic weaponisation of state institutions, including funding cuts to public broadcasters such as NPR and PBS, political interference in media ownership, and politically motivated investigations targeting disfavoured journalists and media outlets.”

It can, of course, always get worse. Autocracies start by consolidating media and turning established outlets in to autocratic agitprop bullhorns, but ultimately move on to dominating or destroying whatever’s left of independent journalism through legal harassment and ultimately murder.

There are paths out from under this, but it requires a lot of coordinated efforts the U.S. has historically had an allergy to. Including restoring antitrust reform and imposing not just consolidation limits but diversity ownership requirements. It would also help to drive creative new funding models for journalism, dramatically reshape media literacy policy, and aggressively support real publicly-funded media freed from corporate influence, historically a close ally to maintaining a functioning democracy.

Filed Under: consolidation, free press, free speech, global press freedom, journalism, media, press, propaganda, reporting

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