Jay Nordlinger over at NRO made a brief mention of the annual release of the Press Freedom list from the group Reporters Without Borders. Every year they rate all the world's nations on the amount of press freedoms that the people of each nations enjoys (or doesn't). Bottom of the list (#169 to #162):
Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Cuba, Myanmar, China and Vietnam.
All top rated vacation spots, to be sure, particularly the hermit kingdom of Dr. Poofy Hair. I had to wonder where our new wackjob nutcase from Venezuela is at, and its rather surprisingly only at #114.
Top of the list:
Iceland, Norway and Estonia
The US is rated 48th, down from 17th in 2002, mostly due to terrorism and war related limitations on journalists. Interestingly, they also pointed out the increasing amount of attention that the bottom dwelling governments are paying to the blogging community.
"In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible...
At least 64 people are currently imprisoned worldwide because of what they posted on the Internet, most of them in China which ranked 163rd. China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam."
Makes one thankful to be an American blogger, doesn't it? The entire list can be found here.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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