Talk:Reporters Without Borders

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I have relocated this section here pending some further details/verification. (Maybe it is in the text of the articles in the references but the key substantiantion needs to be in the main articles. I'll post specific queries below.

Criticism

Curiously, it is the USA's greatest enemies who consistently rate the worst according to the RWB: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela. One cannot help but notice that RWB's own reports are also politically biased. They concentrate on state-based censorship rather than corporate censorship, as the survey that they use to rate countries also shows. It is not surprising that some have questioned RWB's impartiality due to a significant amount of funding coming directly or indirectly from US and French government bodies. See also the external links section.

Various other "press freedom" organisations have also been accused of being biased, such as the US-based IAPA [1] and CPJ [2], the Dutch NVJ and RSF [3], and Hong Kong based HKJA [4].

  • "Curiously, it is the USA's greatest enemies who consistently rate the worst according to the RWB: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela."
How do we know that these countries "rate the worst?"
  • "One cannot help but notice that RWB's own reports are also politically biased. They concentrate on state-based censorship rather than corporate censorship, as the survey that they use to rate countries also shows."
Fair point that can be condensed a bit. However, I'm not clear on what exactly the survey "shows". Are all the questions about government actions? Has anyone ever asked RSF about why the focus on state censorship and not corporate censorship?
  • "It is not surprising that some have questioned RWB's impartiality due to a significant amount of funding coming directly or indirectly from US and French government bodies."
At present there is no section on their funding but it seems that we need some details on how much they do receive from the US and French governments, what it is for, which agencies it is from, what percentage it is of their overall budgets.

I relocted the sceond par as it didnlt make much sense to leave it on the page alone while the first one is being worked on.--Bob Burton 15:33, 29 Oct 2005 (EDT)