In the last year or so we've done quite a few videos about the war being waged on journalists,
hackers and whistleblowers in the US.
We've seen Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond, Chelsea Manning, James Risen and more being
jailed or facing time.
There was also the time the US government seized the Associated Press's phone records,
which they said would put the confidentiality of their sources at risk.
And then obviously the massive intrusion into private communications committed by the National
Security Agency with programmes like PRISM, XKEYSCORE, DISHFIRE and all the rest, revealed
by Glenn Greenwald after documents were leaked to him by Edward Snowden.
All of this led the US to dropping 13 places in the rankings in a report into press freedom
by Reporters Without Borders.
So now the US is positioned in a lowly 46th in the global table.
To be fair, the UK, has also failed to cover itself in glory, arresting Glenn Greenwald's
partner David Miranda on terrorism charges, the government putting what the report calls
"disgraceful pressure" on the Guardian to stop reporting the story and conducting its
very own mass-surveillance programmes like GCHQ's TEMPORA.
Us lot sit down in 33rd, which isn't exactly something to be proud of.
So how's the press index actually worked out?
Well, it covers 180 countries and looks into things like the number of defamation cases
brought for large amounts of money, national security restrictions and whether or not there
are Freedom of Information Acts, as well as things like violence against journalists.
The UK and US were below countries you might expect them to be rising above, like Ghana,
Namibia, Costa Rica, Belize, Jamaica, Suriname and Lithuania.
Australia and Canada, two other countries highly involved in the intelligence scandal
came it at 28th and 18th respectively.
Well, let's start with the ten places where it's frankly brilliant to be a journalist
with some images that conform to some lazy national stereotypes.
At ten, you've got Sweden
Number nine is New Zealand.
Coming in at eight is Iceland, which since the pots and pans revolution and the implementation
of direct democracy, isn't actually that surprising.
At seven there's Denmark.
At six, there's Liechtenstein.
Number five is a tiny little place in the Pyrenees...
Andorra
Then at four it's Luxembourg.
Third is Norway.
Number two is the Netherlands.
And rounding off a great performance for Scandinavia, with all four countries appearing in the top
ten is F-f-f-f-f-Finland.
And now how about the worst ten?
Well there's Laos and then there's Sudan, and then it drops down to the Islamic Republic
of Iran, where President Rouhani has so far failed to implement the changes he promised.
Below them come Vietnam, closely followed by China, with it's rampant censorship of
the internet and state control of many media outlets.
The next two are also pretty unsurprising - you've got the failed state of Somalia,
followed by Syria, where working as a journalist means the threat of bombs
and kidnappings.
The bottom three, which the report describes as places where "freedom of information is
non-existent and despite occasional turbulence in the past year, the countries continue to
be news and information black holes and living hells for the journalists who inhabit them."
And they are Turkmenistan.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea - or North Korea - and then propping up the
pile is Eritrea.
I did mention earlier on the large number of videos that we've done on the war on whistleblowers,
journalists and hackers in the States.
If you want to find out more about what's been going on over there, there are a load
of videos in the playlist over there.
Until next time!