U.S. Press Freedom the Same as Romania's?
U.S. Press Freedom the Same as Romania's?
MANHATTAN (CN) - The United States dropped 27 places - to a tie with Romania - in the Reporters Without Borders 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index, after dozens of journalists were arrested for covering the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Now ranked 47th, the United States shares its spot with Romania and Argentina, just below Taiwan and higher than Latvia.
"I think the Occupy Wall Street arrests were our biggest concern," the organization's Washington, D.C. director Delphine Halgand told Courthouse News in a telephone interview.
The 19-page report chided governments around the world for clamping down on protests, opening this year's report with the caption: "Crackdowns on Protests Cause Big Changes to Index Positions."
"Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011," the report states. "Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/26/43356.htm