Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Ranking of press freedoms in the Middle East

I have said to you before that ranking of countries around the world in various fields is rather ridiculous.  The criteria for Transparency International for example takes people's perceptions into account, thus people in freer countries (like Lebanon) will have a much more negative perception than a very unfree place (like Saudi Arabia) so the perception would favor Saudi Arabia.  The recent Freedom House ranking of freedom of the press are ridiculous (of course, you can't rely on anything produced by the Freedom House).  They put Kuwait ahead of Lebanon. I am very critical of Lebanon but there is no question that Lebanon's press freedoms are ahead of every other country in the Arab world and even in the Middle East (certainly Lebanon has better press freedom and less censorship than in Israel).