South Korea Trip Brings Perspective

    We Americans like to boast about the freedoms of speech and the press that result from the First Amendment. But when four other SPJ members and I attended the Asia Journalists Association forum in South Korea last week, I got a different perspective on press freedom, even the freedom we enjoy here in the states.
    On one hand, we were reminded by AJA members that American journalists are much more free to practice their craft than journalists are in many countries, such as the Philippines and Nepal. In those countries, and in many others, censorship, intimidation and death threats are common.
    On the other hand, we American journalists aren’t as free as we once were. That’s not news to anyone who’s been paying attention to the number of U.S. reporters who recently have been arrested or threatened with arrest for refusing judges’ orders. But I didn’t have any sort of handle on how much freedom we had lost until some of the journalists at the AJA forum reminded me of the Press Freedom Index prepared annually by Reporters Without Borders. Some of the Asian journalists at the forum referred to their countries’ rankings in the Index in much the same way that college football fans refer to their teams’ standing in the polls. The journalists were pleased if their country climbed a spot or two and saddened if their country dropped a notch.
    Curious about the United States’ place in the 2006 Index, I checked it when I returned home and discovered that the news isn’t good. We’re tied for 53rd among 168 countries, and we dropped nine spots from last year’s rankings. Among the reasons? The jailing of Josh Wolf and other reporters, and the lack of a federal shield law.
    For the record, the country that hosted the AJA forum, South Korea, ranked ahead of the United States, at No. 31. Its neighbor to the north was at the very bottom.
    When the 2006 Index was announced in October, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press told the Christian Science Monitor that increases in press freedom in other countries may have had a lot to do with America’s drop in the Index. She said the United States is still one of the safest and best places for journalists to work.
    I’m sure she’s right. We can still boast about our First Amendment freedoms and our relatively safe newsrooms. But we’ve dropped from 17th when the first Index came out in 2002 to 53rd this year, and some of that must be due to a loss of freedom. It makes me wonder if many folks in our government know just how far we’ve fallen.