Which country has the best journalists?
We need a way to measure who makes best use of free speech
(WikiCommons: TV journalists in Catalonia doing their thing)
Warning: If this were a piece of music, it would be filed under “concept album”.
And like many articles that seek to answer a question, it’s unlikely to do that.
It is, nevertheless, an attempt to answer a question that’s long dogged me: is there a way to measure which country’s journalists make best use of their relative freedom of expression?
The concept part first. We know organisations such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF), list which nations have the greatest freedom of the press.
The group currently lists Finland #1 as the country with the greatest freedom of expression, and Eritrea #179 as the least.
Other organisations, such as Freedom House, draw up maps of that denote countries according to the strength of their democracy, of which a free press is always considered to be a part.
Yet what does not appear to exist, is a clever AI-assisted algorithm or weighting system that would show which journalists make the most effective use of the freedoms under which they operate.
In Finland, for example, we might score a journalist a “C” if they simply cover the prime minister’s press conference and ask a basic question; it would be a useful story, but not push the envelope.
By contrast, were a reporter asking a similar question in rural Mexico, which ranks 153rd on the list and where 13 media workers were killed in 2022, we’d surely score them higher.
And if that reporter - or one in India or Pakistan, where journalists also get killed - did some investigative work that exposed something damaging to the government, they’d be ranked higher than their counterpart in the Netherlands, which ranks #2 on the list.
And what factor does race have in all of this? In the US, we all remember when CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was arrested live on air while reporting on the racial justice protests in May 2020 following the killing of George Floyd.
“This is an interesting kind of proposition because it strikes me that the context or the country, is important,” says Jonathan Thompson, vice president at the Freedom Forum, a DC-based advocacy group that seeks to “foster First Amendment freedoms for all”.
“Because what you're getting at with your A and B grades is [how to judge] the same story written by a journalist in Mexico, compared to the same story written by journalists in the UK or somewhere else, with a higher level of press freedom.”
He adds: “We might value those differently. And they may be received differently by their respective audiences.”
India, where I worked for seven years, is proud of having a lively media which has boomed over the past two decades. Local TV channels are often credited with acting as a watchdog and holding officials to account.
Yet India only stands at #140 on the list, between Indonesia and Oman.
India is also a place where journalists are not infrequently killed for their work. Often these killings take place away the capital, New Delhi, in the rural hinterland, or the Northeast, and involve small town reporters who don’t have the backing of a major network or newspaper.
The Committee to Project Journalists says at least two journalists were killed in 2022, a year which saw a 50 per cent leap in media fatalities, with a total of 67.
The increase was in large part due to the war in Ukraine, and violence in Mexico and Haiti.
Pakistan, which I had the privilege to visit on more than 20 occasions, also has a proud and lively media culture. It ranks 159th on the RSF list, behind Egypt.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1266319911321731072?s=20
It is also a place where journalist are often threatened, beaten and sometimes killed. As is always the case, it is local reporters who suffer the worst intimidation. But the country, with a military that has long held a powerful influence over civilian rulers, was not above forcing out a high-profile correspondent from the New York Times, essentially for asking too many probing questions.
The US similarly has a proud and often pugnacious media. Despite its First Amendment, which purportedly protects freedom of expression, it only ranks 32nd on the press freedom list, with the UK at 29th.
While studies show trust in the media is slipping, attacks on the media are also increasing. The CPJ said in 2020 that US journalists faced unprecedented attacks.
Some have suggested Donald Trump has played a role in both of these developments, deriding much of the media as “fake news”, and steering his followers to Fox News or networks further to the right such as Newsmax, or Real America's Voice.
In the West, and probably everywhere, it feels the media most frequently lose sight of its principles when reporting on the nation’s military, or national security.
It’s easy to see why. No Pentagon reporter wants to be accused of being unpatriotic by asking too many questions about the military’s claims about so-called official enemies, such as Russia or North Korea.
And it is incredibly hard for reporters working the intelligence beat to independently check out claims told to them by a source about alleged goings-on in places such as Iran.
Unfortunately, history shows us it is precisely at these moments that reporters need to double down and remember the reason they are there.
(Wikicommons: Finland, whose recently defeated prime minister Sanna Marin stands on right, said to have highest level of press freedom)
Otherwise, we end up with stories splattered across the US and UK media about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Those stories were not simply false, but gave cover to a devastating invasion.
Arguably, Britain has a unique and special topic where the media often appears to lose all sense of perspective - the monarchy.
In the wake of the Queen’s death last September, viewers were treated to non-stop coverage of her life, her funeral arrangements, and the queue of people who lined up to see her coffin.
Polls suggest a full 20 per cent of Britons support replacing the monarchy with an elected head of state, a figure that rises to as much as 70 per cent between those aged 18-26.
But the coverage was uniform in its fawning tone, and if any commentators were permitted to raise the question of whether the monarchy ought to be replaced, they could be counted on one hand.
Some compared it to how the North Korean media operate. To make the point, someone overlaid footage of the Queen’s cortege with the BBC’s own report on the death of dictator Kim Jong-il in 2011.
Graham Smith, chief executive officer of Republic, claims the BBC was particularly one-sided in its coverage.
He says he judges the media coverage “very poorly, because there were almost no dissenting voices around the death of the Queen”.
“There was still room for some discussion about legacy and what she did and so on,” he says.
“But because it's a hereditary monarchy, at the same time you've got an accession of a new king and that was reported without any serious discussion or dissent whatsoever.”
(Wikicommons: Journalists in Mexico have frequently been killed and intimidated.)
The BBC, which receives state funding through the taxpayer, “do a pretty appalling job when it comes to reporting the monarchy”.
Asked what factors prevented the media presenting a more rounded coverage of the monarchy, he thinks there’s a level of “self-censorship” as some reporters believe the public does not want to be presented with other views.
As we consider how context and location impact how well a reporter can do their work, what about the issue of race?
Earlier this month in the state of Tennessee, Republican politicians at the state assembly triggered outrage when they voted to expel three Democrats who had joined protests against gun violence. The Democrats had done so after a shooting at a school outside of Nashville left seven people dead.
The two Black Democrats were initially forced from the legislature in a vote. The third, a white woman, was permitted to stay. Eventually, the representatives who were expelled were reinstated amid allegations of racism and claims the Republicans in the state were out of touch with realities of 2023.
Does a Black journalist in Tennessee, reporting on the controversy, enjoy the same freedom of expression as his or her white counterpart?
Professor Miki Turner is a former journalist, celebrated for being among the very first Black women to have a sports column in national newspaper. She now teaches at the University of Southern California.
How did race impact her career?
She says as a woman, especially a Black woman, she felt she was often held to a higher standards than white colleagues.
Much of her career was spent covering sports, rather than “hard news”, but that race often cut across her beat too. She suggests sometimes it helped her ask better questions of athletes of colour.
White editors were frequently blinded by bias, she says.
“Depending where I was, I would have editors come back and say, ‘Hey, you can't say this this way’,” she adds.
“I wrote an enterprise piece on the anniversary of the four little girls who were murdered in that church bombing [at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama on September 15 1963.] One of the white editors came to me and said, ‘I wish you’d have talked to me about this’.”
She adds: “I'm like, what do we need to talk about? I reported the facts, I talked to all these people who were there. I talked to the pastor of that church, and I talked to Black ministers and asked them what their sermon was the Sunday afterwards.”
Turner says she thinks she turned in a “great piece”.
“But there was always a lot of second guessing,” she adds. “You were made to feel that you weren't being objective enough or you didn't know all the facts.”
And what about Finland, which tops the list ranking nations by the freedom of their media. What’s it like to work there, and does the media do a good job? Does it make proper use of its privileged spot?
Jan Erola, a former reporter based in Helsinki, now heads his own communications consultancy, Kravat.
Does he think the Finnish media does a good job?
“The Finnish press utilizes its rights quite well. Just today, the biggest daily paper, the Helsingin Sanomat, reported, that they won an administrative court case against the city of Helsinki and its mayor, who had concealed the first draft of the city budget proposal,” he says in an email.
He wishes there was more investigative journalism. He says the little there is, “too often focuses on minor or scandalous topics, instead of reporting on possible major systemic problems”. “We all are quite blind to institutional corruption, not only journalists,” he adds.
And what are the major challenges to being a journalist in Finland?
“Time and resources,” he says. “However, the latest trend in quality media - such as the Helsingin Sanomat has been towards more analytical approach, which is a good thing. One of the reasons for that may be a relatively new media called Mustread.fi, which is very similar to Axios or Politico.”
Thanks to everyone who shared their time and thoughts helping me make sense of my thoughts on this topic