The fine journalists who have united under the umbrella of the Investigative Journalism Reportika collective are questioning the validity of major annual rankings on press freedom, corruption, happiness, etc. This collective has just published a study entitled, “What’s Wrong with the Reports?”. The study lists some of the more commonly cited flaws of these popular global rankings. “The rankings are frequently rife with inaccuracies, methodological flaws, limited data availability, and glaring propaganda. The very reports that claim to give unbiased assessments often, instead, introduce bias, create misleading narratives or ignore regional and cultural subtleties that they claim to measure , state the authors of the study.
The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranking on press freedom in the world and Transparency International’s ranking on corruption in the world are of paramount concern. The Reportika group has done fieldwork and in-depth study of data and information of eminent economists in order to reveal weaknesses of those rankings, not to forget considering geopolitical analysts from seasoned researchers.
As for the RSF ranking, which is awaited with bated breath both by the press and by decision-makers around the world, Reportika calls into question a number of methodological issues. RSF was accused of relying, most of the time, on the subjective impressions of the experts and journalists interviewed for the ranking. The Reportika collective also points out that many of the questions posed by RSF in preparing the annual report are often left obfuscated; furthermore, RSF confounds government-controlled media with independent media, resulting in peaceable inconsistences in the rankings, according to authors of the report “What’s Wrong with the Reports?”. They have also proven that the RSF ranking did “not factor in the diversity of media landscapes” into its evaluation.