Who needs a free press?
By Kevin Reed
Recently I was trying to find some good sources for international news that are located in nations where the news is taking place, a search I hadn’t done in a decade or so. Which made me wonder about the state of the free press globally today.
Increasingly here in the U.S. and around the world, there’s been lots of talk around the free press and “the media” - which isn’t much of a term, really. “The media” can be anything from the Bible to a podcast, a video or a book, cable TV or YouTube, a peer-reviewed paper or deliberate misinformation. As the debate has whirled around in the US over that last 7 years or so, I eventually found myself wondering how the press varies globally. I’ve always assumed that a country either has a free press or it doesn’t, and that was pretty much the end of it.
Turns out, the state of the press varies by country. A regional press is either healthy, with many independent options and official sources, or it’s heavily or solely controlled by a government or other entity, or somewhere in between. It’s easy to assume that there is either a free press or government-controlled propaganda, but freedom of press varies widely by locale on a spectrum.
What kinds of nations restrict the press the most? North Korea wins that one, followed closely by Turkmenistan, which, I’ve just realized, I had no idea existed even though its written history dates back to 550 BC. Northeast of Iran, I’ve learned that Turkmenistan is not only the most sparsely populated country in Asia, but it also boasts the fifth-largest supply of natural gas and a bad record around human rights, treatment of minorities, press restrictions, and religious freedoms. Coming in third is Eritrea, yet another nation that I hadn’t heard of and a stark reminder that I need to get up to speed on geography, since I seem to have forgotten things since the fifth grade.
Located in the horn of Africa, Eritrea is where they’ve found hominid 1 million-year-old fossil remains that may be a missing link between homo erectus - one of several human species before us on Earth - and modern homo sapiens. In addition to that rich human history it’s also the home of one of the largest African militaries, a one-party government that doesn’t allow elections, and a non-existent independent press, leaving only government media.
Next we have China, Vietnam, and Syria.
Then in order of worse to better we have places like Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Singapore, Turkey, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, and Argentina.
And this is interesting, because I’ve always just assumed that the U.S.A. was the pinnacle, the icon, the beacon of the free press. After all, it’s enshrined in our Constitution. But, it’s not so. In the United States, we’re a bit better than Peru, Japan, and Chile, but we’re worse than South Korea, Australia, South Africa, France, Spain, and the U.K. And, as we approach the top ten, the U.S. is substantially lower ranking than Canada, Ireland, Portugal, and Germany.
What kinds of nations support an independent, free press the most? The top ten nations with the least restrictions on the press are Portugal, New Zealand, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and at number one, Norway. So, not to pick on the anomaly Jamaica, but 9 out of 10 of the top ten are stable nations with a high quality of life. Many of those nations also rate highest globally in happiness, quality of life, and reputability.
In the USA, which way do we want to go? Towards North Korea, China, Turkmenistan? Or Denmark, Finland, and Norway?
Image by Visual Capitalist
