• About Us
    • Fact Checking Policy
    • Ownership & funding information
    • Volunteer
  • Subscribe
  • Letter submission
    • Submissions Policy
  • Contact Us
The Online Citizen Asia
  • Opinion
    • Editorial
    • Commentaries
    • Letters
    • Comments
  • Current Affairs
    • Singapore
    • Malaysia
    • Indonesia
    • China
    • ASEAN
    • Asia
    • International
  • Finance
    • Economics
    • Labour
    • Property
    • Business
  • Community
    • Arts & Culture
    • Consumer Watch
    • NGO
    • Lifestyle
    • Travel
  • Politics
    • Civil Society
    • Parliament
    • Transport
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Housing
  • Law & Order
    • Legislation
    • Court Cases
No Result
View All Result
  • Opinion
    • Editorial
    • Commentaries
    • Letters
    • Comments
  • Current Affairs
    • Singapore
    • Malaysia
    • Indonesia
    • China
    • ASEAN
    • Asia
    • International
  • Finance
    • Economics
    • Labour
    • Property
    • Business
  • Community
    • Arts & Culture
    • Consumer Watch
    • NGO
    • Lifestyle
    • Travel
  • Politics
    • Civil Society
    • Parliament
    • Transport
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Housing
  • Law & Order
    • Legislation
    • Court Cases
No Result
View All Result
The Online Citizen Asia
No Result
View All Result

Why RSF’s Press Freedom Index is flawed – and why it works

by onlinecitizen
02/11/2009
in Uncategorized
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
Cherian George

Originally published in journalism.sg. Reproduced with permission.

The Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is once again making the news in Singapore, with law minister K Shanmugam dismissing the Republic’s low ranking as “quite absurd and divorced from reality” – even as he stated that the government’s approach has been to ignore criticisms that make no sense.

Indeed, the wonder is that the RSF rankings get so much airtime in Singapore ministers’ speeches. It is simply not deserved. On past occasions, ministers have referred to the rankings and then gone on to state that there is more to life than press freedom – without questioning the validity of the rankings in the first place. This time, at least, the law minister has questioned whether the rankings make sense. How, for example, could Guinea’s brutal junta rate higher than Singapore? (Another shocker: Indonesia lies at 100, below several Gulf states.)

The truth is that RSF’s Press Freedom Index is methodologically and conceptually flawed.

First, it lacks what researchers call “inter-coder reliability”. When surveying anything that’s subjective, you have to make sure that those taking the measurements (the coders) are all applying the same benchmarks. To the best of my knowledge, RSF does no such thing. Instead of using a common pool of rigorously trained assessors, it asks respondents within each country to rate that country on various indicators. Their responses help determine where the country ranks.

That’s like deciding the Miss World beauty pageant by comparing the scores given by the judges in each national competition. In such a system, if Miss Singapore judges gave the winner very high marks – perhaps because they were more easily impressed than, say, the Miss Venezuela competition judges – Miss Singapore could be Miss World faster than Ris Low could say “boomz”.

RSF’s method means that, at the end of the day, what it gives us is not really a “press freedom index” but a “national perception of press freedom index”. Actually, it’s not even that. Depending on who is asked to fill out the survey, it could really be “national press freedom monitors’ perceptions of press freedom index”. What we can conclude from Singapore’s low ranking is merely that whoever the respondents are in Singapore have a worse opinion of their country’s press freedom than 132 other countries’ respondents have of theirs.

Note that it would be wrong to blame the respondents for the result. Even though the end product is an international comparison, that’s not what the respondents were asked for. Indeed, the ranking would probably be quite different if the local experts were shown a list of countries and simply asked, “Where do you think Singapore’s level of press freedom places it relative to these 174 other countries?” My guess is that such an approach would cause Singapore to leapfrog over dozens of states in the table and land somewhere in the 50-100 range: a middle-ranking and far-from-ideal state, but hardly an international pariah.

These, however, are little more than parlour games, because there is a more fundamental conceptual flaw in such rankings. When compiling an index, which is an aggregation of different indicators, the tricky part is what weights to attach to each separate indicator. Nobody has come up with a clear way to compare the different types of violation that are involved in the denial of press freedom.

For example, which is “worse”: (a) killing a journalist to stop a single story? or (b) giving broadcast licences to only a small number of commercial broadcasters who pump out entertainment, leading to a long-term denial of the public’s need to be informed through news and current affairs?

To Amnesty International, which exists to focus on individual human rights violations, (a) would certainly be worthy of attention, while (b) would probably not appear in its annual report. Yet, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights upholds the right of the public to receive information they need. If your main concern is the public’s right to know, (b) may be more worthy of attention than (a).

RSF just ignores this conceptual problem and does not declare the relative weights of different indicators in its index. But, if you read into the results, Singapore’s ranking must mean that RSF considers the Republic’s lack of alternative media and lawsuits against foreign media to be more serious than, say, torture and kidnapping of media workers and blocking of political websites (not practised here, but common in some countries that RSF places higher than Singapore in its rankings).

This problem is intractable, which is why more credible NGOs such as Amnesty International and Article19 don’t bother to create rankings or ratings. They write detailed reports on each country without attempting to make international comparisons.

Like many media-savvy organisations, RSF benefits (at least in the short term) from the publicity payoff of publishing annual rankings. Looking at its success in getting noticed in Singapore, who can say they are wrong?

For just US$7.50 a month, sign up as a subscriber on The Online Citizen Asia (and enjoy ads-free experience on our site) to support our mission to transform TOC into an alternative mainstream press.

Related Posts

2024 Olympic torch relay to start in Marseille
AFP

2024 Olympic torch relay to start in Marseille

03/02/2023
India’s Adani shares plunge again after stock sale cancelled
AFP

India’s Adani denies rise due to Modi as shares fall again

03/02/2023
TotalEnergies says Adani exposure ‘limited’ at US$3.1 bn
AFP

TotalEnergies says Adani exposure ‘limited’ at US$3.1 bn

03/02/2023
India’s finance minister says markets ‘well regulated’ after Adani storm
AFP

India’s finance minister says markets ‘well regulated’ after Adani storm

03/02/2023
A man can be sentenced to death by a testimony of another, but CPIB finds it hard to prosecute with mountain of evidence and self-confession?
Opinion

A man can be sentenced to death by a testimony of another, but CPIB finds it hard to prosecute with mountain of evidence and self-confession?

03/02/2023
AFP

Myanmar junta imposes tough new measures on resistance strongholds

03/02/2023
Subscribe
Connect withD
Login
I allow to create an account
When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
DisagreeAgree
Notify of
Connect withD
I allow to create an account
When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
DisagreeAgree
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Latest posts

2024 Olympic torch relay to start in Marseille

2024 Olympic torch relay to start in Marseille

03/02/2023
India’s Adani shares plunge again after stock sale cancelled

India’s Adani denies rise due to Modi as shares fall again

03/02/2023
TotalEnergies says Adani exposure ‘limited’ at US$3.1 bn

TotalEnergies says Adani exposure ‘limited’ at US$3.1 bn

03/02/2023
India’s finance minister says markets ‘well regulated’ after Adani storm

India’s finance minister says markets ‘well regulated’ after Adani storm

03/02/2023
A man can be sentenced to death by a testimony of another, but CPIB finds it hard to prosecute with mountain of evidence and self-confession?

A man can be sentenced to death by a testimony of another, but CPIB finds it hard to prosecute with mountain of evidence and self-confession?

03/02/2023

Myanmar junta imposes tough new measures on resistance strongholds

03/02/2023
Malaysia High Court dismissed DPM Zahid’s application to get passport returned permanently

Malaysia High Court dismissed DPM Zahid’s application to get passport returned permanently

03/02/2023
Why is Gautam Adani’s Indian empire in turmoil?

Adani turmoil a key test for Modi’s India Inc

03/02/2023

Trending posts

Former Singaporean shares change of life in Australia with annual pay of S$80,000 as a plumber

Former Singaporean shares change of life in Australia with annual pay of S$80,000 as a plumber

by Yee Loon
30/01/2023
25

...

Earning only S$400 a month, delivery-rider turned hawker threw in the towel after two years of running a rojak stall

Earning only S$400 a month, delivery-rider turned hawker threw in the towel after two years of running a rojak stall

by Yee Loon
26/01/2023
24

...

They have done a fine job of confusing us about the jobs situation

They have done a fine job of confusing us about the jobs situation

by Augustine Low
01/02/2023
41

...

Two Indian nationals paid about S$330 and S$730 respectively for forged certificates submitted in their S-Pass application

MOM found issuing EPs meant for foreign PMETs to PRC waitress and general worker

by Correspondent
26/01/2023
42

...

Singapore warns slower economic growth in 2023

Less than 1 in 10 jobs created in first three quarters of 2022 went to Singaporeans?

by Leong Szehian
28/01/2023
69

...

Excessively charging for an essential need, and calling it affordable because people still can pay for it?

by Terry Xu
31/01/2023
40

...

November 2009
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30  
« Oct   Dec »

The Online Citizen is a regional online publication based in Taiwan and formerly Singapore’s longest-running independent online media platform.

Navigation

  • Editorial
  • Commentaries
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Community

Support

  • Contact Us
  • Letter submission
  • Membership subscription

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Fact Checking Policy
  • Privacy Policy

© 2022 - 2023 The Online Citizen Asia

No Result
View All Result
  • Opinion
    • Editorial
    • Commentaries
    • Comments
  • Current Affairs
    • Malaysia
    • Indonesia
    • China
    • ASEAN
    • Asia
    • International
  • Finance
    • Economics
    • Labour
    • Property
    • Business
  • Community
    • Civil Society
    • Arts & Culture
    • Consumer Watch
    • NGO
  • Politics
    • Parliament
    • Transport
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Housing
  • Law & Order
    • Legislation
    • Court Cases
  • Lifestyle
    • Travel
  • Subscribers login

© 2022 - 2023 The Online Citizen Asia

wpDiscuz