A court in the Russian city of St. Petersburg sentenced anti-war activist Olga Smirnova to six years in prison on August 30 on a charge of spreading fake news about the armed forces.
Here’s a map of the global freedom status, and Russia seems to be in the same group with most of Africa Middle East and Asia. Considering this context, the news article doesn’t seem surprising at all. Just another sad day in Russia.
The makers of this map, Freedom House, receive funding mainly from the US government. They also took money from BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms manufacturer.
The argument would be that their findings are therefore somehow tainted and unreliable. However, without any evidence that this is so, simply pointing it out as if it's some kind of "gotcha" is in fact fallacious, as you suggest.
Yeah, well it might not be the best source, but at least they have a map that measures something interesting. The second best option would have been the map of press freedom index. It’s not quite the same things and it isn’t entirely relevant to the conversation either, but there you go. At least it tells you something about the attitude different countries have towards the media, which may or may not be associated with the attitude towards activists. This map also paints a slightly more nuanced picture, but the conclusion is largely the same as before.
Ukraine's being yellow is just wrong. It doesn't really matter if it's fair, but with the ongoing war and the effects of it on the society and its attitudes towards press the color should be orange.
Well, there's less bias typical for UK-funded sources than usual. At least Azerbaijan is not the same color as Armenia (thought the UK seem to have made a 180-degree turn on that conflict in the last couple of weeks, while keeping the same "formal""legal" position).
Ah, that's OT, about Russia - it would be purple on that map even before 2008.