By: Atty. Perry Solis Press freedom is alive and well in the Philippines despite the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) release of its annual World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) putting the country in an unenviable position of no. 147 under what it called a new methodology, down from 138 last year. According to RSF's website, the low ranking of the country was due to many factors, foremost of which is media killings, especially the Ampatuan Massacre that happened more than a decade ago in 2009. As presented by RSF, it would be easy to assume that countries with a higher ranking would have a "freer" press than those with low rankings but that is not the case. Journalists should ask: Do citizens in African countries such as Namibia (18), South Africa (35), or Ivory Coast (37) enjoy greater press freedom than those from countries below it in ranking, such as let's say, citizens of the United States, which is currently at no. 42 in RSF's index? Journalists should wonder how RSF was able to come up with such rankings, considering the fact that press freedom is not an absolute matter that can be computed and analyzed mathematically. How does one "measure" press freedom in a country? BUT BEFORE THAT, WHO IS THE REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS? According to Wikipedia, RSF "is a leading international non-profit and non-governmental organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information. Its mandate is to promote free, independent and pluralistic journalism and to defend media workers. Its advocacy is founded on the belief that everyone requires access to the news and information, inspired by Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights which recognizes the right to receive and share information regardless of frontiers, along with other international rights charters. RSF has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie." It gets its funding mostly from the EU nations. Interestingly, most of the EU nations are ranked in the top tier of the index, labeled by the RSF as a "good situation" in terms of press freedom. Also, anybody can become a "member" of RSF as long as he or she pays a minimum of 15 euros (student's discount rate). But to get the coveted RSF ID card, one must pay at least 100 euros if you're living outside of France. So how does the RSF come up with its own assessment of the state of press freedom per country? Prior to 2022's index, RSF stated that: "The degree of freedom available to journalists in 180 countries and regions is determined by pooling the responses of experts to a questionnaire devised by RSF. This qualitative analysis is combined with quantitative data on abuses and acts of violence against journalists during the period evaluated. The criteria used in the questionnaire are pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information." "To compile the Index, RSF has developed an online questionnaire focusing on the subjects specified above...The questionnaire is sent to journalists, media lawyers, researchers and other media specialists selected by RSF in the 180 countries and regions covered by the Index. Each country and region is assigned a score based on the answers provided by these experts and on the figures for acts of violence and abuses against journalists during the previous year.""A team of in-house specialists, each assigned to a different geographical region, keeps a detailed tally of abuses and violence against journalists and media outlets. These researchers also rely on a network of correspondents in 130 countries." NEW METHODOLOGY BEGINNING 2022 As far as the 2022 index is concerned, RSF says it "developed a new methodology to compile the 20th World Press Freedom Index" after "working with a committee of seven experts from the academic and media sectors." As found on their website: "The new methodology defines press freedom as "the effective possibility for journalists, as individuals and as groups, to select, produce and disseminate news and information in the public interest, independently from political, economic, legal and social interference, and without threats to their physical and mental safety." In order to reflect press freedom's complexity, five new indicators are now used to compile the Index: the political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and security." "In the 180 countries and territories ranked by RSF, indicators are assessed on the basis of a quantitative survey of press freedom violations and abuses against journalists and media, and a qualitative study based on the responses of hundreds of press freedom experts selected by RSF (journalists, academics and human rights defenders) to a questionnaire with 123 questions. The questionnaire has been updated to take better account of new challenges, including those linked to media digitalisation." "In light of this new methodology, care should be taken when comparing the 2022 rankings and scores with those from 2021. Data-gathering for this year's Index stopped at the end of January 2022, but the updates for January to March 2022 were carried out for countries where the situation had changed dramatically (Russia, Ukraine and Mali)." SO SHOULD RSF's WPFI BE TAKEN AT FACE-VALUE? Andrew Rosenthal, a veteran American journalist and former editorial page editor of The New York Times has called the RSF a "state-subsidized, ostensible defender of press freedom". He described RSF's data gathering as arbitrary. In one of his earlier commentaries on the RSF ("The Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: Independent Assessment or EU Propaganda?" World Politics Review, November 6, 2007) he stated that: "RSF's lack of transparency concerning both its primary "data" and the "method" ostensibly employed for converting the latter into the concrete "scores" assigned to the individual countries, obviously leaves the organization an extremely large -- indeed virtually unlimited -- margin for arbitrariness in establishing its rankings. A closer look at the RSF rankings shows that it has made ample use of this margin." "The unseriousness of RSF's approach is patent. It would appear that the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Rankings serve essentially as pegs on which to hang preconceived political judgments: a useful tool, then, for the propaganda purposes of RSF's sponsors. But for an independent and objective evaluation of the situation of press freedoms in the world, one will have to look elsewhere." Indeed, RSF's index is untrustworthy and indefensible in every way. That is why RSF does not hold press conferences when it releases its index. RSF merely puts out some kind of press release accompanying the release of their WPFI. How can one gauge the state of press freedom from a questionnaire given to unnamed individuals with unknown political and social backgrounds, hand-picked by RSF which it labels as "experts"? As another American writer puts it in one of the more scathing reviews of RSF's index: "Whatever the case, one thing's clear: while RSF may well deserve plenty of credit for some of its efforts, the Press Freedom Index is a joke - and, more than that, a slap in the face to all the writers and journalists who have been persecuted in recent years xxx." (The Press Freedom Index has no Credibility, Medium, April 8, 2018.) To understand these extremely negative views of the index, one only has to look at the rankings themselves. Take, for example, Singapore, with is currently listed as 139 in the index, and yet, according to RSF itself, "Singapore boasts of being a model of economic development but it is an example of what not to be in regard to freedom of the press, which is almost non-existent.&