Rigging Press Freedom

A comment on ``Third Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index'' by Reporters Without Borders, 2004.

The press freedom index counts events of abuse against journalists and freedom of press and ranks countries based on the number of such events. This method is flawed, because it penalizes large countries and makes small countries appear better than they are. For example, Trinidad and Tobago, with 2 events, is in 11th place of the ranking, tying with Estonia, Germany, and Sweden; yet the population of Trinidad and Tobago is just a little over a million while Germany has 82M people. Clearly Germany has the better record of press freedom than Trinidad and Tobago with the same number events and population that's eighty times larger.

Based on the original index, I generate different ranking, based on the number of events per million of population (rather than unscaled events).

Methodological note: The original method is clearly flawed because it heavily penalizes large countries. The method used here is more fair, but it still could be improved. Namely, scaling events based on population favors countries that have lower percentage of their population working as reporters and journalists in general. A better method would use the number of reporters and journalists (both foreign and domestic, professional and amateur) working in a given country. Unfortunately, I have no data for the number of journalists in different countries. I suspect that if such data were available, countries such as China and India (and perhaps Brazil) would score worse than they do in my table, while countries with large percentages of journalists (some bloggers should qualify as amateur journalists), such as United States and Western European countries would score better.

Data sources: The population data comes from the CIA factbook for 2004. Timor-Leste data was lacking from that source, so an alternative source was used. Similarly, an alternative source was used for the disputed territories in Israel; further, press freedom abuses committed by the Israeli army and by the Palestinian authority were merged to better characterize the degree of press freedom on that territory (after all, a murdered journalist is a murdered journalist, regardless of the murderer).

Rank	Events per million	Country	Events	Population
1	0.0137	United States of America (American territory)	4.00	293027571
2	0.0243	Germany	2.00	82424609
3	0.0306	Netherlands	0.50	16318199
4	0.0361	India	38.50	1065070607
5	0.0579	France	3.50	60424213
6	0.0671	Switzerland	0.50	7450867
7	0.0711	China	92.33	1298847624
8	0.0785	Japan	10.00	127333002
9	0.0896	Brazil	16.50	184101109
10	0.0922	Slovakia	0.50	5423567
11	0.0924	Denmark	0.50	5413392
12	0.0959	Finland	0.50	5214512
13	0.0996	United Kingdom	6.00	60270708
14	0.1024	Canada	3.33	32507874
15	0.1093	Norway	0.50	4574560
16	0.1170	South Africa	5.00	42718530
17	0.1260	Ireland	0.50	3969558
18	0.1550	Italy	9.00	58057477
19	0.1583	Indonesia	37.75	238452952
20	0.1678	New Zealand	0.67	3993817
21	0.1768	Poland	6.83	38626349
22	0.2158	Thailand	14.00	64865523
23	0.2226	Sweden	2.00	8986400
24	0.2234	Spain	9.00	40280780
25	0.2290	South Korea	11.13	48598175
26	0.2651	Mexico	27.83	104959594
27	0.2750	Nigeria	37.75	137253133
28	0.3416	Czech Republic	3.50	10246178
29	0.3573	Russia	51.38	143782338
30	0.3865	Belgium	4.00	10348276
31	0.3879	Pakistan	61.75	159196336
32	0.3963	Tanzania	14.50	36588225
33	0.3976	Austria	3.25	8174762
34	0.4247	Philippines	36.63	86241697
35	0.4276	Portugal	4.50	10524145
36	0.4336	Latvia	1.00	2306306
37	0.4422	Bangladesh	62.50	141340476
38	0.4771	Australia	9.50	19913144
39	0.5407	Turkey	37.25	68893918
40	0.5449	Argentina	21.33	39144753
41	0.5453	Ethiopia	37.00	67851281
42	0.5715	Egypt	43.50	76117421
43	0.5981	Hungary	6.00	10032375
44	0.6264	Taiwan	14.25	22749838
45	0.6320	Chile	10.00	15823957
46	0.6504	Ghana	13.50	20757032
47	0.6574	Greece	7.00	10647529
48	0.6948	Kenya	22.25	32021856
49	0.7586	Benin	5.50	7250033
50	0.7641	Dominican Republic	6.75	8833634
51	0.7976	Romania	17.83	22355551
52	0.8315	Lithuania	3.00	3607899
53	0.8638	Mozambique	16.25	18811731
54	0.8831	Democratic Republic of Congo	51.50	58317930
55	0.9089	Uganda	24.00	26404543
56	0.9108	El Salvador	6.00	6587541
57	0.9158	Bosnia and Herzegovina	3.67	4007608
58	0.9845	Venezuela	24.63	25017387
59	0.9908	Afghanistan	28.25	28513677
60	1.0507	Vietnam	86.88	82689518
61	1.0570	Madagascar	18.50	17501871
62	1.0641	Bulgaria	8.00	7517973
63	1.0685	Ukraine	51.00	47732079
64	1.0730	Mali	12.83	11956788
65	1.0941	Hong-Kong	7.50	6855125
66	1.1186	Slovenia	2.25	2011473
67	1.1198	Colombia	47.38	42310775
68	1.1303	Sudan	44.25	39148162
69	1.1345	Iran	78.30	69018924
70	1.1554	Guatemala	16.50	14280596
71	1.1971	Burkina Faso	16.25	13574820
72	1.2488	Ecuador	16.50	13212742
73	1.2905	Israel (Israeli territory)	8.00	6199008
74	1.3350	Morocco	43.00	32209101
75	1.3539	Algeria	43.50	32129324
76	1.4187	United States of America (in Iraq)	36.00	25374691
77	1.4522	Peru	40.00	27544305
78	1.4907	Estonia	2.00	1341664
79	1.5370	Jamaica	4.17	2713130
80	1.6135	Niger	18.33	11360538
81	1.6808	Cameroon	27.00	16063678
82	1.6933	Malaysia	39.83	23522482
83	1.6959	Paraguay	10.50	6191368
84	1.7009	Iceland	0.50	293966
85	1.7220	Honduras	11.75	6823568
86	1.8238	Trinidad and Tobago	2.00	1096585
87	1.8337	Sri Lanka	36.50	19905165
88	1.8594	Serbia and Montenegro	20.13	10825900
89	1.9285	Costa Rica	7.63	3956507
90	1.9738	Uzbekistan	52.13	26410416
91	1.9812	Senegal	21.50	10852147
92	2.1773	Nicaragua	11.67	5359759
93	2.2925	Bolivia	20.00	8724156
94	2.3054	Iraq	58.50	25374691
95	2.3970	Yemen	48.00	20024867
96	2.4138	Angola	26.50	10978552
97	2.4258	Burma	103.63	42720196
98	2.6035	Malawi	31.00	11906855
99	2.6307	Croatia	11.83	4496869
100	2.6497	Guinea	24.50	9246462
101	2.7313	Cambodia	36.50	13363421
102	2.8435	Zambia	29.75	10462436
103	2.9167	Kazakhstan	44.17	15143704
104	2.9418	Uruguay	10.00	3399237
105	3.0492	Burundi	19.00	6231221
106	3.0691	Saudi Arabia	79.17	25795938
107	3.1030	Nepal	84.00	27070666
108	3.2442	Albania	11.50	3544808
109	3.4846	Cote d'Ivoire	60.38	17327724
110	3.4859	Chad	33.25	9538544
111	3.5092	Togo	19.50	5556812
112	3.7465	Syria	67.50	18016874
113	3.9578	Tajikistan	27.75	7011556
114	4.1639	Sierra Leone	24.50	5883889
115	4.6104	Moldova	20.50	4446455
116	4.6832	Rwanda	37.25	7954013
117	4.7362	North Korea	107.50	22697553
118	4.8326	Panama	14.50	3000463
119	5.1176	Namibia	10.00	1954033
120	5.2381	Somalia	43.50	8304601
121	5.2471	Belarus	54.10	10310520
122	5.3268	Zimbabwe	67.50	12671860
123	5.4316	Macedonia	11.25	2071210
124	5.5028	Haiti	42.13	7656166
125	5.8371	Congo	17.50	2998040
126	5.8587	Georgia	27.50	4693892
127	6.2829	Tunisia	62.67	9974722
128	6.3126	Azerbaijan	49.67	7868385
129	6.4545	Lebanon	24.38	3777218
130	6.9058	Mongolia	19.00	2751314
131	6.9370	Kyrgyzstan	35.25	5081429
132	6.9736	Jordan	39.13	5611202
133	7.3625	Botswana	11.50	1561973
134	7.8560	Armenia	23.50	2991360
135	8.6032	Mauritius	10.50	1220481
136	8.6841	Central African Republic	32.50	3742482
137	9.4467	Cuba	106.83	11308764
138	10.6013	Laos	64.33	6068117
139	11.5420	Libya	65.00	5631585
140	11.7972	Liberia	40.00	3390635
141	13.0917	Singapore	57.00	4353893
142	14.0285	Kuwait	31.67	2257549
143	15.8174	Lesotho	29.50	1865040
144	15.8824	Timor-Leste	13.50	850000
145	16.9264	Guinea-Bissau	23.50	1388363
146	17.0081	Mauritania	51.00	2998563
147	18.1638	Fiji	16.00	880874
148	19.0710	Gambia	29.50	1546848
149	19.9095	United Arab Emirates	50.25	2523915
150	20.5278	Turkmenistan	99.83	4863169
151	20.6737	Israel and PA (Occupied Territories)	80.67	3902062
152	20.9677	Eritrea	93.25	4447307
153	21.0694	Cape Verde	8.75	415294
154	25.5448	Bhutan	55.83	2185569
155	26.5129	Swaziland	31.00	1169241
156	27.6703	Gabon	37.50	1355246
157	28.3532	Cyprus (North)	22.00	775927
158	38.6771	Qatar	32.50	840290
159	40.6503	Comoros	26.50	651901
160	77.4467	Bahrein	52.50	677886
161	88.4235	Equatorial Guinea	46.25	523051
162	117.7982	Djibouti	55.00	466900
163	134.2928	Grenade	12.00	89357
164	203.8429	Maldives	69.17	339330
165	290.7264	Seychelles	23.50	80832
166	346.2540	Tonga	38.17	110237

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