{"id":754,"date":"2019-08-21T06:35:50","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T06:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/?p=754"},"modified":"2020-04-17T10:31:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T10:31:40","slug":"us-press-freedom-has-decreased-to-a-problematic-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/us-press-freedom-has-decreased-to-a-problematic-level\/","title":{"rendered":"US Press Freedom has decreased to a “Problematic” level"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Long presenting itself as a bastion of freedom, the USA appears to have relegated this status to an era of the past. In the 2019 \u201cFreedom of the Press\u201d ranking by the nongovernmental organization \u201cReporters Without Borders\u201d (RSF),<\/a> the country has fallen into a category described as \u201cproblematic\u201d<\/a>. The US ranked 48th<\/sup> of 180, just behind Romania and right ahead of Senegal. It presents the fourth year of decline, as press freedom for its 327 million inhabitants has been continuously decreasing since 2016, and it is a drop of three positions compared to last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hostile atmosphere for journalists has taken hold in the country, fueled, amongst others, by a populist president who repeatedly attacks the press in a plethora of ways and decries reporters as \u201cenemies of the people\u201d and their publications as \u201cfake news\u201d, should they engage in unfavorable coverage. This in turn has emboldened local officials to take more severe and questionable measures in attempts to curtail free reporting \u2013 evidenced by the example of a criminal investigation into journalists\u2019 after-hour phone calls in an Oregonian county<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporters\nWithout Borders raise alarm that the disliking of media (especially of liberal\noutlets) has reached a new level of hatred, with newsrooms throughout the\ncountry having \u201cbeen plagued by bomb threats\u201d and open expression of violence\nin the tragic attack on Maryland\u2019s Capital Gazette newsroom, which killed five\npeople, including four journalists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

27 reporters have been attacked so far in 2019, as well as eight arrested, most commonly during protests, according to the \u201cU.S. Press Freedom Tracker<\/a>\u201d. Further, eight journalists were searched extensively at the border and there have been four reports of search and seizure of equipment submitted to the tracker\u2019s online database, plus eleven subpoenas or legal orders directed against members of the media to oblige them to release information or material. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\ntrend has emerged of excluding media from events of public interest, with\nreporters having been escorted from or not permitted entry into several of President\nTrump\u2019s rallies (the US Press Freedom Tracker counts a total of 26 incidents of\njournalists being denied access in 2019). The Trump White House has also notably\nset a new record for the longest time span without a White House Press\nConference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

RSF\nplaces the United States 30 spots behind its northern neighbor, Canada, in 2019\u2019s\nranking. The problematic category which the US has descended into for the first\ntime since the first annual ranking in 2002 also includes countries such as\nMauritania, Angola and Kyrgyzstan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ranked\nat the very top of the index are European countries, in order Norway (for the\nthird time in a row), Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark. The\ncountries scoring the worst marks were Sudan, Vietnam, China, Eritrea, North\nKorea and Turkmenistan, in descending order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s ranking, and even more so the general downward trend that has persisted over the last years, should serve as a dire warning to the country which has somewhat of an obsession for the words in its constitution \u2013 a constitution which, in its very first amendment, guarantees the freedom of the press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by\u00a0<\/em>Nijwam Swargiary<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/em>Unsplash<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US press freedom is now considered “problematic” according to a key index. Here’s why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,53,22,6,10,120,23,13],"tags":[21,148,126,63,122,147,18],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-3-slider-posts","category-canada","category-europe","category-featured","category-oppression","category-press-freedom","category-right-wing","category-usa","tag-donald-trump","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-media","tag-politics","tag-press-freedom","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":757,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}