Minnesota should be America's 'Nordic model' on press freedom
World Press Freedom Index shows the Scandinavian exception to global press repression, and conditions this state should aspire to.
By John Rash, Rash Report
April 23, 2021 — 6:00pm
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Coronavirus vaccine is not all that's in short supply worldwide.
Trustworthy, truthful journalism — the "main vaccine against disinformation," according to Reporters Without Borders — is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 nations ranked in the organization's 2021 World Press Freedom Index, which was released this week.
Only 7% of nations have a "good" environment for journalism, a grim, slim sliver compared with the 20% deemed "fairly good," the 33% labeled "problematic," the 29% considered "bad" and the 12% "very bad" for press freedom. And because so many of the latter categories are representative of more densely populated African or Asian nations like China (177th, just behind the world's worst places for media freedom: Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan), the proportion of people denied the disinformation vaccine of a free press is even more egregious.