Any Day Now, They’ll get to the Press Freedom Part of Press Freedom

This is typically European: getting carried away with massaging your ego and sating your preconceived notions with so little conscience as to entirely ignore the facts.

United States:
There was both praise and concern for the United States, which climbed 20 places from 40 to 20 to join the United Kingdom.

“Barack Obama’s election as president and the fact that he has a less hawkish approach than his predecessor have had a lot to do with this,” RWB said, adding that the sharp rise concerned only the state of press freedoms within the country.

The US, their estimation went UP the league table of “Press Freedom” by getting rid of their enemy, George Bush, and electing their theoretical special new friend, Barack Obama. All this without any reference to the press, it’s freedoms, or the fact that virtually the entire US media is ‘in the tank’ for the white house under threat of being cut off from the news. The State virtually commands the media’s emissions, and can always get their way with 90% of the airtime and column inches.

A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News--which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps--has instead been greeted by a collective shrug.

That's true even though the motivations of the White House are clear: Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking the hated Fox. Try to keep a critical news outlet off-balance. Raise doubts about future Fox stories.

But most of all, get other journalists to think twice before following the network's stories in their own coverage. . . .

To Euro-poppers, THAT is called an improvement in the freedom of the press. They enjoy being servile tools of charismatic characters with political power, so long as they can pretend their Ken Doll is a revolutionary.