US now ranks 53rd in World Press Freedom Index - a sad time for Democracy

Do they involve Web based blogs and community sites like current, or is this more only T.V and printed paper news media, because i think if you involve the web this number may be a little scuffed, but i mean it;s hard to be a fair press news media organization when the people that are in power have stolen a majority of the money away and refuse to let everyone have a slice of the pie.

cadsuch

Peace!

Colmor; I didn't say "Christian". I said exclusionary religious institutions. It means religious intolerance. It means bigoted! If you want to call preachers who preached (campaigned) against John Kerry (a war hero) and for a baby killer (W), Christian, these are your judgment calls, not mine. Yes preacher took the campaign to the pulpit in 2004, and I am never going to say it's OK, regardless of what label you place on the campaign speakers.

cadsuch... why do people relentlessly attack Christianity? Exclusive? Not true! Everyone is invited, everyone is included, no one is excluded unless they choose to exclude themselves, which of course they are free to do. So come on in!

You suggest that a handful of preachers are responsible for Bush being in power. Is that what happened? Do you seriously believe that? I seem to recall something about a rigged ballot box.

Christians are not the enemy.

The "free open market" people have had ample time to disprove their concept. Our Democracy is no longer, because we allow concentrated power to bring it to a halt. A few people own the media. A Democracy can not survive under these circumstances. A few people control the financial reality. A group of conglomerations control the medical reality.

It is true that our lives are controlled more and more all the time. Which means that it was once less controlled. We spent a lot of time and energy trying to get government off our back so we would be less controlled.

Now, we are controlled by something that we knew was going to happen. We knew that if we allowed trusts and monopolies to form that we would have less of a democracy. Because we saw it happen when our markets collapsed during the 19th and 20th century. So, we deserve for it to happen because we allowed the trust and monopolies to form again.

But there are two other institutions that we have allowed to make our democracy less of a democracy.

1) We are here, in this country, because our ancestors were seeking a freedom of a non-exclusionary religion. We are slowly loosing that about our culture. Our politicians and our exclusionary churches are getting together and they are pretending to decided what is good for us. In the last presidential election a collection of preachers, got up in the pulpit and they pretended to convince some of our citizens to vote for a baby killer and against a decorated war hero, at a time when we were in a pre-emptive war began by the baby killer.

2) We are a group of citizens who live in a country that its government has passed laws and are acting and implementing these laws that make its citizens without political power. The dirty word, is UNION.

What you have, when you have a tightly concentrated business sectors that is supported by exclusionary religious institutions is.......you have feudalism.

Anyone who is a regular consumer of what passes for "news" in this country already knew this; the scarier thought is that MOST people DON'T know this and not only believe the stuff being spoonfed to them by mass media but also apparently don't care to change it. I see no public outcry over the loss of freedom of the press.

Hi Carolyn. Thanks for the invite. I commented on this somewhere else... The US is slowly becoming a police state ever since 9/11 and the implimenting of a new world order is looming dangerously close to reality. Its been in the works since just after wwII and the horrible thing is most people don't know or don't care enough to do anything about it. We're like a bunch of dumb sheep: baahhh baahhh, God help us.

Wow. So they America used to be 44th? That's a much better number.

This was how Mr. Bush got in office #53 this sucks.

Yes, it is very evident by now that only the approved qustions get asked at the President's Press Conferences.

Truly sad, and actually a damning indictment of the American people. We are responsible for this country too. That is why sites like Current are so important now as well as fightng for Internet Freedom, which they are coming after as we type.

Its just really sad when we talk about spreading freedom but we are 56th in the world

ok - all of us Current lovers need to start a sticker campaign - everyone needs Current stickers of some kind to put up - Current must be taken to the next level of cool . the revolution starts with stickers , then moves on to t-shirts - but does not go beyond t-shirts , insofar as tangible goods are concerned ( and neither stickers nor t-shirts are ever sold - they are to be given away at shows , skate shops , indie bookstores , etc. ) , otherwise it loses it's cool . Graf artists have to contribute by throwing up stencils , indie musicians have to mention Current in liner notes ( not too prominently ) - basically , street level awareness , and all done without violating any laws ...( just random ideas - but i'm not joking )

current might now be the changing factor for this. how many news stations will actually report on thier own lack of freedom? that has to count for something. some things about that report confuse me though, am i just ignorant or is hong kong part of china? if it is then how does it have it's own category?

I like how the U.S. has the same freedom of the press as Botswana and Croatia. The "fourth" branch of our government( the press) reminds me of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction: Locked in a box with a rubber ball stuffed in its mouth.

I agree. Current.com is the beginning of a backlash to the force-fed 'news' we've been given for the past decade. Hopefully more people will become engaged, educated and opinionated!

Yes the they are stealing money from the United States Treasury as fast as they can while they entertain us with pretty lights and sounds over and over again.
No one knows why the US economy is so bad...funny maybe because our boat is leaking $2 trillion dollars...into the waiting pockets of Halliburton, Blackwater and other corrupt entities. Yes lets bail out some more of Bush's friends..we missed a few.

I said try to. They are too incompetent to screw in a lightbulb, but they can try all they want. They're motives could easily be questioned, considering Halliburtion alone was given more money by the governmnet last year then all spending on the US educational system.

53rd Place. Perfect for hypocricy in action on a worldwide scale.

Egnatius212, Spreading freedom is a scam. We help relieve them of their natural resources and whip them down so they can't defend themselves. Darfar apparently doesn't have oil, so we aren't going to help them for example.

It's sad that they try to spread freedom to others, but in the process it destroyes it for us.

Thank you Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
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.

Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April this year.

What are we doing about this? NOTHING!