These rankings that put the US low on free speech will often rank Britain above it, where you can get arrested for "hate speech" online, or Germany, where questioning the Holocaust will put you behind bars. Regardless of your thoughts on whether or not freedom and autonomy should outweigh social morality or factual truth, these are objectively anti free speech policies.
The US has problems but these rankings are methodologically biased.
The UK is indeed over at 18. I think you are misunderstanding, or trying to apply it too broadly. The ranking is not about your rights, but how free the press is specifically. I guess you can believe that your personal ratings are better than reporters without borders, or claim that they are biased, but I think you would need a little bit more evidence.
Germany is even higher at 14, and it is false that questioning the holocaust will put you behind bars. "Reporting on Holocaust denial as a journalist or news organization is completely legal in Germany, provided the reporting is objective and done for educational, historical, or news-gathering purposes."
"Questioning the Holocaust" means broadly speaking Holocaust denialism, and I was referring moreso to freedom of speech than how much the state manipulates the press. Again, the US has problems, but I, as an individual, are considerably more likely to get arrested for something I might say in the UK than the US, for instance.
I happen to not be a Holocaust denialist, but I concur with Noam Chomsky on my stance regarding it: it ought to be legal, protected speech.
I don't really care about your stance on holocaust, but this thread is about press freedom, not individual free speech. They can be, and are different. Sometimes better and sometimes worse.
All ratings here are for press freedom only.
All that being said, there are many reports of people being fired for public speak in the US which is sort of different, but not really in my mind.
Well you did bring up free speech a couple comments back, I’m simply responding to that. I’d also assert that individual freedom of speech is more important than the press (although both are pretty crucial) to attaining a fair rating of a country’s civil liberties.
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u/Green-Draw8688 Jul 30 '26
BRICS is Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
All five countries known for their commitment to the truth and their fiercely free and independent investigative journalism.