Semi-regularly several organizations will perform a sort of international "audit", comparing different countries with respect to several basic human rights, such as freedom of speech. Year after year for example Finland places easily on the top places in these lists, especially when it comes to free speech.
The thing is, these studies can be, and often are, quite misleading.
One of the major problems with them is that they almost exclusively concentrate on freedom of the press, instead of the freedom of speech of individual citizens. In these studies freedom of the press is pretty much equated with freedom of speech, and is the main, and perhaps only, measurement stick used to determine that ranking.
The problem with measuring freedom of the press, especially in Europe, is that the mainstream media, the press, is almost unanimously left-leaning, with the vast majority of it being far-left, and pretty much all the remaining being complacent to the ideology and almost never stepping over the party line.
Because European governments are by far likewise extremely left-leaning, this means that there's no need for the government to restrict, limit, censor or punish the press. The vast majority of the press willingly toes the party line on their own volition, and does it gladly. In fact, the majority of the press is actually just a propaganda machine for the far left policies of the government. The governments don't need to do anything about it. The governments can simply leave the press alone, and they will do the government's bidding on their own.
This is, essentially, faux freedom of the press. Yes, technically speaking there's an almost utopistic amount of freedom of press, with the government imposing pretty much no restrictions nor pressure on the press, and letting them print pretty much what they want. However, it's just a masquerade. The government doesn't restrict the press because they don't have to. The press is a completely complacent lapdog of the far-left ideology, fully on its own will, so there's no need to put a leash on it.
Since these studies concentrate mostly on the freedom of the press, and equate it with free speech, this means that the actual restrictions on free speech imposed onto the citizens are ignored and hidden from the statistics.
In Finland, for example, you can get several years of jail for offending a religion, for instance. This is not just theoretical or fear-mongering. There have been many cases. For example in one infamous case a man made a YouTube video where he drew with pen and paper a very crude picture of the koran and Muhammad, and proceeded to deface it. He had no actual koran, nor did he write or say anything from the koran, or anything like that. It was just a generic crude picture of a book which he said in the video was a koran, and that's it. He got sentenced to jail for, I kid you not, 2 years and 4 months.
Two years and four months in jail, for drawing a crude picture on paper, saying it was a koran and Muhammad, and defacing it. And no, that was his sole crime. There were no aggravating circumstances or multitudes of crimes. That was the sole crime he was prosecuted for.
That's "freedom of speech" for you in Finland.
The thing is, these studies can be, and often are, quite misleading.
One of the major problems with them is that they almost exclusively concentrate on freedom of the press, instead of the freedom of speech of individual citizens. In these studies freedom of the press is pretty much equated with freedom of speech, and is the main, and perhaps only, measurement stick used to determine that ranking.
The problem with measuring freedom of the press, especially in Europe, is that the mainstream media, the press, is almost unanimously left-leaning, with the vast majority of it being far-left, and pretty much all the remaining being complacent to the ideology and almost never stepping over the party line.
Because European governments are by far likewise extremely left-leaning, this means that there's no need for the government to restrict, limit, censor or punish the press. The vast majority of the press willingly toes the party line on their own volition, and does it gladly. In fact, the majority of the press is actually just a propaganda machine for the far left policies of the government. The governments don't need to do anything about it. The governments can simply leave the press alone, and they will do the government's bidding on their own.
This is, essentially, faux freedom of the press. Yes, technically speaking there's an almost utopistic amount of freedom of press, with the government imposing pretty much no restrictions nor pressure on the press, and letting them print pretty much what they want. However, it's just a masquerade. The government doesn't restrict the press because they don't have to. The press is a completely complacent lapdog of the far-left ideology, fully on its own will, so there's no need to put a leash on it.
Since these studies concentrate mostly on the freedom of the press, and equate it with free speech, this means that the actual restrictions on free speech imposed onto the citizens are ignored and hidden from the statistics.
In Finland, for example, you can get several years of jail for offending a religion, for instance. This is not just theoretical or fear-mongering. There have been many cases. For example in one infamous case a man made a YouTube video where he drew with pen and paper a very crude picture of the koran and Muhammad, and proceeded to deface it. He had no actual koran, nor did he write or say anything from the koran, or anything like that. It was just a generic crude picture of a book which he said in the video was a koran, and that's it. He got sentenced to jail for, I kid you not, 2 years and 4 months.
Two years and four months in jail, for drawing a crude picture on paper, saying it was a koran and Muhammad, and defacing it. And no, that was his sole crime. There were no aggravating circumstances or multitudes of crimes. That was the sole crime he was prosecuted for.
That's "freedom of speech" for you in Finland.
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