Reporter-centric An anonymous person forwarded me this email exchange with Reporters Without Frontiers about their report which ranked the Palestinian Authority's respect for press freedoms higher than those of Israel.

To: Reporters Without Frontiers

Just 1 or 2 questions: is it possible that some countries are nice to journalists (and receive a high score) because they are generally getting good press?

And that these same countries would be much more repressive if they were getting bad press, or in the middle of a war?

Or that these same countries leave media intimidation to freelance groups (eg. Lebanon and Hezbollah)?


From: RSF - Afrique [mailto:afrique@rsf.org]
Sent: Wed, October 23, 2002 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: World Press Freedom Survey
Hi,

I dont think countries like Benin or Senegal (more than 1000 people recently died in a ferry accident and a war is dividing the country for more than ten years) are getting a good press. And there is a real press freedom there. They have a good rank in our index.

On the other hand, when there is a war in a country of course journalists are often victims of it.