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U.S. drops to 46th in press freedom

Feb 12, 2014 7:54 pm By Robert Spencer

Come Nineveh

It’s worse than that, too. Reporters Without Borders didn’t take into account the mainstream media’s voluntary self-censorship and refusal to report on the truth about Islam and jihad, its demonization and smearing of foes of jihad terror, and its cowardly capitulation to Islamic supremacist intimidation and thuggery, adopting what are essentially Sharia blasphemy laws for fear of offending Muslims or provoking a riot.

If the freedom of speech is ever fully extinguished in the United States, as it could be far more easily than most people think, the responsibility will lie to a tremendous degree with those who should have been its foremost guardians: the mainstream media. Allen Drury’s bleak and dystopian 1973 Cold War novel Come Nineveh, Come Tyre envisioned a weak, wishful thinking-driven, fondly Leftist U.S. President, Ted Jason, as given to fantasy-based policymaking as the present incumbent, presiding over the bloodless surrender of the United States to the Soviet Union. The media adores President Jason, cheerleads for him energetically, defames and denigrates his foes relentlessly, and does everything it can to make him look good, right up until the point when a few of them realize that the freedom of speech is gone, and they have outlived their usefulness.

In one scene, the nation’s top TV news anchors, columnists, and newspaper publishers, having turned against the President and his program far too late, are arrested wholesale and committed to St. Elizabeth’s insane asylum in southwest Washington, “on complaint,” scream the headlines, “of Domestic Tranquility Board and Justice Department Special Branch.” The group of once-powerful media giants is herded past the asylum’s gate:

As it passed out of sight and the heavy gate began to close, one last anguished cry, so desperate and filled with pain that it would have moved the observer, had observer there been, came from the lips of [famed columnist] Walter Dobius.

“We did it!” he cried. “We did it! We d–”

But who he meant by “we,” and what it was that he thought “we” had done, was never to be divulged, for at that point he was summarily, and no doubt roughly, choked off. The gates clanged shut and no further sound escaped the walls of St. Elizabeth’s.

When the freedom of speech is finally gone in the United States, will Christiane Amanpour, or Bob Smietana, or Niraj Warikoo, or Kari Huus, or Alex Kane, or Max Blumenthal, or Michael Kruse, or Anne Barnard, or Scott Shane, or Mark Hicks, or any other of the nakedly biased “journalists” who have in recent years sided with Islamic supremacist enemies of free speech and abetted their defamation of foes of jihad terror and defenders of free speech, be lamenting, “We did it!” as the gate clangs shut on them? Or will they be eagerly jockeying for power among the new authoritarian elites? More likely the latter.

“Report: US Drops to 46th in Press Freedom,” by Taheshah Moise for Breitbart, February 12 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

According to Reporters Without Borders, America dropped 13 spots on the World Press Freedom Index 2014, designed to rank 180 countries in terms of the freedoms journalists enjoy and the regulations placed on them by government authorities.

The Index, published Feb. 11, shows that America now ranks number 46, below countries like South Africa and France. The Index has been published annually since 2002, but the 2014 ranking for America marks one of the most significant declines ever reported.

According to Christophe Deloire, the Reporters Without Borders Secretary General, the World Freedom Index is based on seven criteria: the level of abuses, the extent of pluralism, media independence, the environment and self-censorship, the legislative framework, transparency and infrastructure.

Investigative journalist James Risen believes the Index rightly shows the drop in American journalists’ freedoms due to crackdowns on reporters and whistleblowers and the efforts of the Obama administration and the National Security Agency to limit the amount of information America has concerning the “War on Terror” and other subjects.

“I think 2013 will go down in history as the worst year for press freedom in the United States modern history,” James Risen said.

Risen, who has reported for the New York Times since 1998, said he has personally felt some of the backlash of the guarded Obama administration and has seen some of his colleagues suffer repercussions as well.

Rather than pursue journalists, the Obama administration has focused on their sources—the two most scrutinized whistleblowers being Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.

“We have an administration that came in claiming that it was going to be the most transparent in history when in fact it is one of the most secretive in history, and certainly the most aggressive anti-press administration in modern American history,” Risen said….

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Filed Under: journalistic bias


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Feb 12, 2014 at 9:04 pm

    A prophetic novel. No journalist has asked Obama ‘why must no one mock Mohammed?’. Why is Mohammed above criticism? The Sira and Hadiths and the Koran as well condemn Mohammed of so many crimes, he could not enter the United States, but would immediately be arrested for crimes against humanity.

    • JessieJames says

      Feb 13, 2014 at 12:01 am

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6uZFSj_ueM

      Very true Mort, my question is; just how far is he willing to go to insure it doesn’t happen on his watch?

  2. nathan marcus says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 6:11 am

    Although I don’t doubt that the USA does not truly have a free press, it should be noted that ReportersWithoutBorders are a hard core left wing orginization that censors much of the news that this site tries to cover. So, I wouldn’t attach too much importance to what they say.

    • boakai ngombu says

      Feb 13, 2014 at 11:18 am

      nonetheless, afraid THEY are to speak out against this destroyer of civilizations (THEY being the billionaire publishers and advertisers and most journalists)

      the profits won’t allow forthright talk about the adherents of the Allah god (unknowable; the best of all deceivers) and his spokesman, Muhammad (lately contrived; certainly informed by the Koran (supposedly inspired and true)

      the profits are more valuable than serving mankind and speaking out against the Allah god and its bloodlust, corruptions, demolitions, ruinations.

      • Inchoate says

        Feb 13, 2014 at 11:23 am

        Do you mean “profits” as cash after expenses, or prophets as wise men “seerers”?

        • boakai ngombu says

          Feb 13, 2014 at 4:44 pm

          bottom line profits NOT

          bottom of hell prophet

  3. RoofGardener says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 6:51 am

    Nathan just took the words out of my mouth. When I read this article, my first thought was “Is the American media REALLY slipping, or is RWB indulging in “America Bashing” with an agenda that has nothing to do with the quality of American new reporting ?

  4. dave says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 8:01 am

    Here in Canada, There has been a very successful campaign to muzzle ANYONE who dares espouse any view other than the accepted “politically correct’ point of view, whether it be on gender bias, sexual orientation, or that son of a slut, the so-called prophet mohammed. Our pastors are forbidden by law to talk about the negative effects of homosexuality, under the newly-passed HATE speech legislation, and muslims have successfully lobbied to have their book, and anything related to islam included in this legislation.
    if it happened here, beware! IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!

    • JessieJames says

      Feb 13, 2014 at 11:06 am

      and the cancer spreads!

    • Olorin says

      Feb 13, 2014 at 10:58 pm

      That was my thinking–this isn’t about the War On Terror, it’s about imposing a very limited social, economic, and philosophic view on everyone.

      See the work of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (thefire.org) for how higher ed trains kids to be prepared for making careers in that environment.

    • Angel Warrior says

      Feb 22, 2014 at 4:46 am

      Dave….

      You don’t watch Sun News network do you? They consistently talk about those things and they are not PC about them! If what you said is true…don’t you think those journalists would have been charged already with Hate Speech crimes?

      Jeesh… I really wish some Canadians could really understand what the Harper Government is doing…. The Harper Government is not Pro-Islam by any stretch of the imagination!

      Harper Gov’t. had Section 13 taken out of our laws. No one has the right to be offended by anyone speech…no one can sue now on their being offended.

      BTW…. if you looked at the list…. Canada is number 18!

  5. Always On Watch says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 1:17 pm

    The comparison with Come Nineveh, Come Tyre is interesting — and, in my view, quite accurate. I read that novel when it was first published and found it too implausible. I don’t find it implausible now. Not at all! We’re living this dystopian nightmare and watching the devolution of America happening right before our very eyes.

    Linked at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

  6. Papa Whiskey says

    Feb 13, 2014 at 7:38 pm

    Don’t forget the disgraceful performance of the American press over the Danish Muhammad cartoons. Despite the fact that the worldwide uproar over them was the top story of the week in early February of 2006, despite the centrality of the images to the story, and despite the manifest need to both show solidarity with fellow journalists and push back against Islamic bullying, only THREE major U.S. papers had the integrity to print any of them with their coverage. The rest offered weasel words to justify their obscene pusillanimity. I resigned from my own paper in protest over the issue, and it was like wetting my pants in a dark suit — it gave me a warm feeling, but nobody noticed.

  7. Larry A. Singleton says

    Feb 17, 2014 at 12:58 am

    I’ll harp on this one more time; (Insert Happy Face) How difficult is it to add the last couple of sentences to complete the article? In this case Breitbart. I know this isn’t a biggy with anybody else but I print out and file a lot of these articles. Just as important, if not MORE important a lot of the time, is Robert’s narratives before the actual articles. So what I frequently have to do is use Word (Open[crap]Office) to put the two together into a complete whole. It’s a habit I got into going to city and county meetings. It’s called studying the issues. I’ll sit and attack an article with pen and hi-liter even if I end up throwing it away.

    One of these days they’ll come up with a device I can do all that. Like one of those high fallutin’ “Notepad” things. Unfortunately they don’t download newspaper and magazine articles. And I’m not sure you could make notes and hi-lite on those things like I do on paper. Besides I’ll probably have to wait another 20 years before they become affordable enough for me to even buy one.

    A sign of a good book is when you could almost hi-lite every word on every page. Like I did with Indoctrination U. by Horowitz. I just got Spencer’s Not Peace but a Sword and Ibrahim’s Crucified Again and it looks like Spencer’s book is going to be a good one; I’m on page 27 and it’s almost a crazy quilt covered in “pink” and “yellow”.

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