Freedom of the Press

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) publishes the World Press Freedom Index every year. You know that things have not been good for reporters; they get killed, arrested, harassed for simply doing their jobs. The countries ranked with the most press freedom are Finland, Netherlands, Norway, and Luxembourg. Those with the least press freedom of the 180 countries ranked are Eritrea, Syria, Turkmenistan, and North Korea.

The U.S. did not fare well. We were ranked 46th just above such beacons of freedom as Trinidad and Tobago, Papua New Guinea, and Romania. Last year we ranked 33rd. Some of the reasons for the drop in the rankings: Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and the Justice Department's move to secretly obtain two months of phone records from the Associated Press in a search for information about a CIA leak of a foiled terror plot.