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. Since 2001, the expansion of increasingly restrictive legal arsenals — particularly those linked to national security policies — has been steadily eroding the right to information, even in democratic countries. The Index’s legal indicator has declined the most over the past year, a clear sign that journalism is increasingly criminalised worldwide. In the Americas, the situation has evolved significantly, with the United States dropping seven places and several Latin American countries sliding deeper into a spiral of violence and repression.
- See the Index
- See the infographic in full screen
- See also: “Gal Beckerman’s How To Be a Dissident is not a guide for how to resist authoritarianism. Rather, Beckerman explores the mindset of dissidents. The volume is less than 200 pages but densely packed with fascinating accounts of global dissidents over thousands of years, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Baruch Spinoza to Diogenes to Henry David Thoreau (and many whose names will not be familiar)…”
- See also The New Republic – no paywall: “Jamie Raskin’s Harsh Trump Takedown on CNN Has Damning Hidden Message. The real importance of that Jamie Raskin–Dana Bash dust-up on Sunday: Raskin showed that Democrats and journalists share values that Donald Trump does not…”
- See also Older Americans who vote live longer than those who don’t – new research
