Originally posted by maurizio13:
Different organisations have different criteria for assessing
democracy, but one thing is certain, Singapore consistently came up
worse than the average in terms of ranking for both reports. Surely
you don't expect Coca Cola and Pepsi to provide you the exact same
amount of satisfaction.
If you have read through the report, I am sure you will notice that
"the Economist" omitted "Freedom of the Press" in their
assessment.
In the two reports, Singapore consistently came up worse than
Indonesia and Philippines in terms of democracy.
Despite Timor Leste being a young country and the strife therein,
they came up much higher than us in terms of democracy.
[b]Basic principles and
criteria
In developed countries, freedom of
the press implies that all people should have the right to express
themselves in writing or in any other way of expression of personal
opinion or creativity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
indicates: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas
through any media regardless of frontiers"
This philosophy is usually accompanied by legislation ensuring
various degrees of freedom of scientific research (known as
scientific freedom), publishing, press and printing the depth to
which these laws are entrenched in a country's legal system can go
as far down as its constitution. The concept of freedom of speech
is often covered by the same laws as freedom of the press, thereby
giving equal treatment to media and individuals.
Besides said legal environment, some non-governmental organizations
use more criteria to judge the level of press freedom around the
world. Reporters Without
Borders considers the number of journalists murdered, expelled or
harassed, and the existence of a state monopoly on TV and radio, as
well as the existence of censorship and self-censorship in the
media, and the overall independence of media as well as the
difficulties that foreign reporters may face. Freedom House
likewise studies the more general political and economic
environments of each nation in order to determine whether
relationships of dependence exist that limit in practice the level
of press freedom that might exist in theory. So the concept of
independence of the press is one closely linked with the concept of
press freedom.
The media as a necessity for the
government.
The notion of the press as the fourth branch of government is
sometimes used to compare the press (or media) with Montesquieu's
three branches of government, namely an addition to the
legislative, the executive and the judiciary branches. Edmund Burke
is quoted to have said: "Three Estates in Parliament; but in the
Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth estate more important
far than they all."
The development of the Western media tradition is rather parallel
to the development of democracy in Europe and the United States. On
the ideological level, the first advocates of freedom of the press
were the liberal thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries. They
developed their ideas in opposition to the monarchist tradition in
general and the divine right of kings in particular. These liberal theorists argued that
freedom of press was a right claimed by the individual and grounded
in natural law. Thus, freedom of the press was an integral part of
the individual rights promoted by liberal ideology (see the
History section below).
Freedom of the press was
(and still is) assumed by many to be a necessity to any democratic
society. Other lines of thought later argued in favor of
freedom of the press without relying on the controversial issue of
natural law; for instance, freedom of expression began to be
regarded as an essential component of the social contract (the
agreement between a state and its people regarding the rights and
duties that each should have to the other).
[/b]
I was actually asking Gazelle why he thinks "The Economists"
were doing a better job in ranking democracy.
