Archives for December 5th, 2005

One cannot retrieve any information about material that has entered a black hole. (source)

The Paris-based association Reporters Without Borders keeps track of press freedom around the world. One way it does this is with its annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index. In the 2005 edition, Slovenia finished astoundingly well: 9th in the world. (Ahead of pretty much everyone except the Scandinavian countries and  some other smaller European nations.)

Unfortunately, it’s total bollocks. Slovenia has many great qualities, but an extraordinarily free press ain’t one of them. And what makes the ranking even more bizarre is that 2005 was by no means a great year for the media here. Not that Reporters Without Borders seems to be paying too much attention. If you go to their archive of country news, for example, you’ll notice something a little interesting: There’s nothing about Slovenia. In case you think I’m exaggerating, let me say this: there really is not a single paragraph, sentence or syllable about Slovenia in the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 or 2005. It’s complete and total silence.

And don’t think it’s because nothing has been going on here. There are always things happening. This year, for example, saw two major events:

1) A new law was passed about the public broadcaster, giving the government more control over editorial content.

2) The Petek Case was lost. (I don’t want to go too much into this, but here it is in a nutshell: Back in 2001, a journalist named Miro Petek published some articles about financial wrongdoings (tax evasion and what-not) going on in local companies. Not-so-coincidentally, some goons paid him a visit at home and gave him empty craters where before there had been stuff like his nose, his jaw and his cheekbones. They even cracked the poor guy’s skull. Worst of all, they didn’t even try to make it look like a robbery or anything. They just scrambled him like Sunday-morning eggs and then exited, stage right. There was no need to call in Sherlock Holmes for help on this one; it was a matter of connecting some dots, but the police and prosecutors didn’t manage to do it. Earlier this year, after languishing in limbo for years, and after one judge even admitted to being "frightened" of handling the case, it ended with acquittals and now it’s over.

And yet, despite this, Slovenia somehow improved its press-freedom rating between 2004 and 2005. Last year, it finished in 15th place and this year it made it inside the top ten. In the meantime, back in the United States, the New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent a few days in the big house because she refused to cooperate with an investigation about who had leaked the identity of a CIA agent. That event helped push America down 20 places to number 44.

Either someone is bad at math or they’re simply not paying attention. I’m guessing it’s the latter.