Journalists in the UK are less free to hold power to account than those working in South Africa, Chile or Lithuania, according to an index of press freedom around the world.
Laws permitting generalised surveillance, as well as a proposal for a new espionage act that could criminalise journalists and whistleblowers as spies, were cited by Reporters Without Borders as it knocked the UK down two places from last year, to 40th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index.
In the past five years, the UK has slipped 12 places down the index. Rebecca Vincent, RSF's UK bureau director, said this year's ranking would have been worse were it not for a general decline in press freedom around the world, making journalists in Britain comparatively better off than those in countries such as Turkey and Syria.
[...] Among the concerns raised by RSF was the passage of the UK's "menacing" Investigatory Powers Act last November, which met only token resistance within parliament, despite giving UK intelligence agencies and police the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world.
RSF said the act was a possible "death sentence" for investigative journalism in Britain, owing to its lack of protections for whistleblowers, journalists and their sources, and that it set a damaging precedent for other countries to follow.
Source: The Guardian
(Score: 3, Interesting) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Friday April 28 2017, @10:26AM (2 children)
"Denmark (#4) and the Netherlands (#5) have island bits—Greenland, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba—in the Americas."
Heh. I've never thought of Greenland as being in the Americas, but maybe.
After all, Canada is in a spirited war with Denmark over Greenland (or a small part of it):
http://www.businessinsider.com/canada-and-denmark-whiskey-war-over-hans-island-2016-1 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday April 28 2017, @11:06AM (1 child)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Friday April 28 2017, @05:50PM
The OAS map excludes Greenland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_American_States#/media/File:Organization_of_American_States_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg [wikipedia.org]
But as you say, that's political not geographical.