Land of the Free & Freedom of the Press

The Reporters Without Borders organization has released its annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index and the U.S., home of the free and yada yada yada, has dropped nine places to No. 53.

I'm embarrassed, and if you're an American you should be, too.

Tied for No. 1 in the index were Finland, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands. No surprises there. The bottom five were Burma, Cuba, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea. No surprises there, either.

But it hurts to read that countries like the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia that had state-controlled media not too many years ago are ranked well above the U.S.

The Highway Scribe, himself a journalist, has a word or three about this state of affairs over at Highway Scribery.