https://rsf.org/en/ranking It seems you are not that right.
Perhaps these rankings would have been believable 5 years ago, but today, they are not. The United States is also rated much too low here, which also stinks of political motivation. While we do have a President that can't seem to help but open his mouth to release stupidity and toxicity, the US has the strongest legal protections of speech and press in the world, and the only government action against journalists that might shift this belief is the ongoing case with Julian Assange, too recent to have been reflected in these rankings.
There is, to my knowledge, only one country which has Constitutionally protected free speech and it's the United States. There are censorship laws on the books in most other countries, either in fact, or in actuality. Germany for instance censors many types of speech. You may have some argument that this is a good thing, but nonetheless it shouldn't rank higher on any unbiased free speech index than the US, and yet here is one in which it is more than 30 positions higher ranked.
Here is some stuff to read up on this http://www.rightsrisks.org/banner/india-medias-crackdown-dur...
Without respect for the individual and individual rights, Indian society will not progress. Sitting on your high horse and making judgements about how the poor and uneducated (or any other group) aren’t ready for free speech is not the way.
Reality, I fear is fairly dystopic and I can keep posting such news articles all day which show India's slide into Authoritarianism.
Journalists and editors have been openly killed in Sri Lanka for opinion pieces that dared to tarnish the government.
Some of the countries ranked higher(in rank = lower number) are not even so safe to be in. How can you consider liberty among a place people can't even freely go where they want to report?
Reporters without borders is probably one of the best sources to evaluate the quality of Freedom of Press worldwide.
But for some people arguing that not all is great with their freedom in the US challenges a part of their identity. And that makes rational discussion at least difficult.
As an example: Growing up near the Iron Curtain (on the western side) I believed for a long time, that we were the universally free side, while there was no freedom in the east.
During the last 10 years or so I realized that there were freedoms on the other side I didn't know of. And have never had in this so called free society.
I came to realize that there are different freedoms and that every society has different limits to these freedoms. Sometimes even within one country there are different limits to the same freedom for different social groups. Take Germany for example. The freedom to receive a good to great education depends massively on the affluency of one's family. There is nearly no chance of social movement for the poor. Or take the freedom to tell your boss what a bad idea it is to increase dividends for shareholders by 10% while letting people go (with the official reason being told is, that the company is struggling) and telling the rest, that there is no mt enough earnings to warrant a raise. I know people who were fired because of this.
Or take the outcry at Google when someone at Google published an internal mail with right wing leaning (if I remember correctly).
I am very much left leaning, but I would not challenge some parts of the ideological agendas being pushed at my workplace because I fear being ostracized.
So to make a long argument short I think freedom isn't an absolute. And the ideology behind it is often part of someone's identity. That makes rational discussion difficult.
One of my favourite interviews is with Berlin[2] where he talks about why positive liberty is so dangerous.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfhQhdA-zss Tom Richey with an intro [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIP9IjJcZr4 Isiah Berlin interview on the ABC on freedom
For some reason, many people seem cling to a nebulous idea of 'government,' that is more a wish fulfillment mechanism than concrete enforcer entity, can provide positive rights without impinging on the more basic negative rights.
> During the last 10 years or so I realized that there were freedoms on the other side I didn't know of. And have never had in this so called free society.
Mind sharing some examples?
Also the freedom of social upwards movement was way greater in eastern Germany than in western Germany. Also the freedom of a better educational system (propaganda was massive in both systems none the less).
The only thing that comes to mind for me here is the Damore memo, except 1) he didn't publish it, and 2) it was very left-leaning. It was about how to actually achieve the company's diversity goals, there were just some parts of it based on actual research that went against accepted narratives.
Was there some other leaked email I'd not seen?