Today the world recognizes World Press Freedom Day. Instituted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO), its purpose is to “celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on [its] independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.”
The issues of quality reporting, media independence and the safety of journalists are as relevant today as ever – especially in the United States.
While American journalists have long been hailed as flag bearers of the profession — able to report, write and broadcast in mostly ideal circumstances — in the past two or more decades, we have seen a number of cases of fabrication by journalists that have shamed the profession at large and undermined public trust. The more journalism loses popular support, the greater the leverage the public and government officials have to restrict press freedom.
No longer can U.S.media ignore the issue of press freedom and point fingers at other nations for their poor records. Today, journalists in the United States are more under fire than ever.
In 2015, the United States’ ranking in the Reporters without Borders index of press freedom dropped from 20 in 2010 to 49 – four steps above Haiti. (For the full list, go to https://index.rsf.org/) Ranking higher than the United States: Burkina Faso, Namibia, El Salvador, Suriname, Samoa and the eastern Caribbean, to name a few.
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