The US and UK place first and eighth, respectively, in the World Economic Forum’s ranking for the most competitive countries in the world. But when you look at one of the subindexes in the benchmark report, neither country performs well — both have abysmal rankings for press freedom when compared to other rich countries.
Rich countries are considered as those in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), as they are all considered relatively developed economies with democratic systems. There are currently 34 countries in the OECD.
Every year WEF releases its benchmark Global Competitiveness Report that takes a look at 98 indicators across 140 countries to determine an overall ranking. Each indicator uses a scale from 0 to 100 to signify how close an economy is to the ideal state or “frontier” of competitiveness. Those indicators are then organised into 12 pillars, such as health, skills, financial system, infrastructure, and institutions.
In addition, WEF this year used a new methodology to fully capture the new emerging dynamics of what fuels the global economy. This meant including some other indicators that were not included before, such as diversity, workers’ rights, re-skilling, and press freedom.
WEF used data from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called the World Press Freedom Index to measure levels of press freedom and ranked countries from 0 [good] to 100 [very bad]. The index looked at:
Media independence
The quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news
Information and acts of violence against journalists
WEF said data gathering across these topics was based on two sources:
A database of the level of abuses and violence against journalists and media
An expert opinion survey on pluralism, media independence, self-censorship, transparency, and infrastructure in each country
The UK ranked 35th while the US ranked 40th in the overall ranking of all the countries, scoring 23.3 and 23.7, respectively. This is way behind a number of European and African countries, with Norway topping the table with a score of 7.6 and Sweden in second with 8.3.
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Table: WEF/Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
The UK ranked 23rd and the US ranked 25th out of 34 OECD countries for press freedom. Among the rich countries that had worse press freedom than the UK and the US were Chile, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, and Turkey.
Why the UK and US is under scrutiny for its press freedom
2018 marked a particularly deadly year for journalists at US media outlets. US resident and Saudi columnist for the Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside a Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. Earlier this year there was also a mass shooting in the newsroom of The Capital, a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland.
In the UK, RSF said this year that there have been a number of major issues that have contributed to Britain’s low ranking.
The 2017 General Election was cited as a particularly heavy-handed approach by the UK government to manipulate the press. In addition, RSF said the threat to press freedom was demonstrated by law firm Appleby using British courts to sue the Guardian and the BBC over the publication of the Paradise Papers, which unveiled the rich and famous using tax avoidance schemes.
