The 2015 World Press Freedom Index is out and it is not a pretty picture for the United States.
The U.S. now ranks number 49, falling behind countries such as Botswana, Niger, El Salvador, and Lithuania – places that are not exactly known for their freedom.
The U.S. ranked number 20 on the list just 6 years ago in 2009. And the drop of 29 spots on the list is much to blame on the Obama administration.
Obama made many campaign promises that did not come to fruition once he obtained the presidency. One of those promises was for more transparency and protection of whistleblowers. Not only has Obama not protected whistleblowers, he has strongly gone after them.
Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, and Julian Assange all come to mind when we are talking about recent whistleblowers. The Obama administration went after all of them for exposing truths and wrongdoings of the U.S. government. Politicians don’t like it when other people don’t play by their rules and they expose government criminality. Therefore, Obama and other politicians will make the truth tellers into alleged criminals.
The Obama administration has prosecuted eight whistleblowers under the Espionage Act of 1917, which is more than the total of all previous administrations.
In 2013 and 2014, James Risen of the New York Times was harassed by federal prosecutors to expose the identity of one of his sources. Another strike against press freedom last year was the arrest of at least 15 journalists during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
It is quite unfortunate when telling the truth and exposing government criminality can in itself make you a criminal. This in itself is bad, but it also leads to many people not talking out of fear for their lives or livelihoods. This is what the politicians want. Their first priority isn’t so much to punish the truth tellers as to make sure it doesn’t happen again. They are trying to send a message.
It’s Not All Bad News
The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. In this sense, maybe the Obama administration is following the First Amendment, as Obama doesn’t always rely on laws from Congress. Instead, he just does what he wants.
While the U.S. has slipped greatly in its ranking of press freedom, and rightly so to some extent, we should understand that this is a somewhat subjective index and there are several factors and weightings that decide it.
Fortunately, even with the prosecution of several whistleblowers in recent times, we now enjoy the greatest time ever in terms of free speech and free press because of technology.
We don’t have to go through the gatekeepers any more.
In the old days, you could only get your news from a limited number of sources. You had a few network television stations, but these mostly spoke the establishment line. There were newspapers, but you were subject to reading whatever the editor wanted to publish.
There was perhaps a bit of variety on the radio, and conservatives certainly have enjoyed this format, but there is still a limited variety of what you can hear.
With the Internet, everything has changed. There are millions and millions of websites and blogs just coming out of the U.S. When you go global, the amount of information is simply astronomical. You can search for almost anything and find it.
There are no gatekeepers any longer. If you have an Internet connection and a computer (or tablet, or smartphone), then you have a world of information at your fingertips. Stories that would have once been suppressed are no longer kept secret.
Before the existence of the Internet as we know it today, would Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning have been able to even get their message out there? They could have taken their story and evidence to a big newspaper or television station that probably would have spiked it.
So while journalists and whistleblowers are finding even more resistance than ever from the U.S. government, overall I believe we are better off. The reason is because we have millions of journalists just in the United States now.
Everyone with a smartphone can instantly start recording audio or video of any situation. Anyone with a story can write a blog post or tell their story on social media. It is surprising how telling a good story on Facebook can get around quickly.
Brian Williams knows this well now. In the pre-Internet era, he probably would have gotten away with telling his less-than-truthful stories.
The government can and will keep trying to suppress big stories, especially those that involve government wrongdoing and government criminality. But the animals have already escaped from the zoo and there is no getting them back in. Despite the government’s crackdown on press freedom, we have more press now than at any time in history.
The government is cracking down on whistleblowers more now than ever before for the simple fact that whistleblowers are having a greater effect now than ever before.
