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The Big Chill
October 27, 2006 06:21 PM
NOTE: If you are reading this report, it's because you have been authorized to receive transmissions on my encrypted samizdat network.
America shares 53rd place with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga in the latest "press freedom" index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders and released this week.
The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism. [My italics]
Yup, that sounds accurate. I'm sure they're anxiously shredding files over at Salon and The Nation as they wait for the FBI's elite anti-criticism squad to raid. That'll teach them not to place scare quotes around "War on Terror"! (Nice touch: "[H]is 'war on terrorism.'" It's like "His Lionel train set hobby-kit with scale-model villages in the basement.")
According to RSF, journalists would be much better off in Finland, which ranked at the top of the survey. The downside, I guess, is that they'd be limited to reporting about wood crafts and suicides. In terms of your country's press freedom score, it helps if the country doesn't have much that is pressing for the press to report. Not to take anything away from Finland, of course - or Iceland (tied at No.1), which also appears to have discovered the correct balance between press freedom and national security.
And of course there's always France.
France (35th) slipped five places during the past year, to make a loss of 24 places in five years. The increase in searches of media offices and journalists’ homes is very worrying for media organisations and trade unions. Autumn 2005 was an especially bad time for French journalists, several of whom were physically attacked or threatened during a trade union dispute involving privatisation of the Corsican firm SNCM and during violent demonstrations in French city suburbs in November. [My italics]
Sounds ideal. What's a few government raids, when you might otherwise be suspiciously regarded in the U.S.? But remember, when you travel to Europe, bring along due respect for the The Prophet:
A French high school philosophy teacher and author who carried out a scathing attack against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in a newspaper commentary says he has gone into hiding under police protection after receiving a series of death threats, including one disseminated on an online radical Islamist forum.The teacher, Robert Redeker, 52, wrote in the center-right daily Le Figaro 10 days ago that Muhammad was “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass-murderer of Jews and a polygamist,” and called the Koran “a book of incredible violence.”
The Redeker case is the latest manifestation in Europe of a mounting ideological battle that pits those who believe Islam and the Prophet Muhammad can be criticized in the name of free speech against those in the Muslim community who believe no criticism can be tolerated...
... “I can’t work, I can’t come and go and am obliged to hide,” Mr. Redeker told Europe 1 radio in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location on Friday. “So in some way, the Islamists have succeeded in punishing me on the territory of the republic as if I were guilty of a crime of opinion.”
Mr. Redeker, who has kept in contact with news agencies by cellphone and e-mail, said that his wife and their children had also been threatened with death. He told Europe 1 that his wife was in hiding with him, but he was less clear about his three children, saying that one of them had been forced to move and that another was in a boarding school.
Asked to describe the sort of threats he had received, Mr. Redeker replied, “You will never feel secure on this earth. One billion, three hundred thousand Muslims are ready to kill you.” [NYT]
Unbelievable. A high school with a philosophy teacher? Only in France....
