The United States dropped a couple of spots (again) in the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. In the 2018 Index, the U.S. places 45th; behind South Korea at 43rd and Romania at 44th. The U.S. ranks one place ahead of Italy and two ahead of Belize. Yay!
On the upside, the U.S. came in ahead of Trump’s favourite dictators – as Russia ranks 148 and North Korea dead last (again) at 180.
The United States’ ranking fell from 43 to 45 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2018 World Press Freedom Index, continuing its downward trend in the first year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. In contrast, its northern neighbor Canada gained 4 places due to steps taken to safeguard the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.
Press freedom violations in the country of the First Amendment in fact have become so frequent of late that RSF (Reporters Without Borders) joined a coalition of more than two dozen press freedom organizations to launch the US Press Freedom Tracker in August, which documented 34 arrests of journalists in 2017, the majority while covering protests (find out more on the tracker).