II Timothy 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
The United States fell 13 spots in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index from 32nd to 46th, one of the biggest declines in the survey for a country that didn’t feature murders of reporters.
The U.S. was the featured country in the report’s section on information sacrificed to national security and surveillance. The conviction of Bradley Manning and the situation with fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden were described as “warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest.”
The report also cited the Department of Justice targeting the Associated Press and taking their phone records without warning because they wanted to know who leaked CIA information to a reporter. Also the cases of James Risen of the New York Times and Barrett Brown, a freelance journalist, who are facing jail time for publishing classified information without revealing sources or testifying against them.
Finland topped the list for the fourth straight year followed by Netherlands and Norway who held their same positions from last year. The bottom three are Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.
