If European countries want to tout their supposed press freedom, they should stop pointing to a ranking that confuses censorship with protection.
If European countries want to tout their supposed press freedom, they should stop pointing to a ranking that confuses censorship with protection.
E uropean regulators recently fined X €120 million for breaching the Digital Services Act. Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance fired back, accusing the EU of becoming a speech-policing bureaucracy. Almost immediately, EU officials and cheerleaders rushed to post a graphic of the World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) as a rebuttal. The image shows that European countries top the rankings, while the United States is all the way down at 57th. Who are Americans to lecture anyone about free expression?
There’s just one problem. The ranking they’re waving around doesn’t measure what they think it does.
The WPFI, published annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), is treated as an authoritative measure of global press freedom. But the 2025 edition is more an ideological beauty contest than an objective scorecard — one that explicitly rewards the European regulatory model and punishes any nation that refuses it.
Consider what “press freedom” actually looks like in countries ranked well above the U.S. In the United Kingdom (#20), police show up at citizens’ doors to interrogate them about memes. Approximately 33 people are arrested per day for “offensive” online comments. That’s more than 12,000 arrests per year.
British police have also arrested journalists for their online posts. Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson had police at her door over a single post on X. Journalist Caroline Farrow was arrested at her home for posts that criticized transgenderism. Officers forced their way in without a warrant and seized her devices over messages that were allegedly “grossly offensive.”
Yet the WPFI ranks the U.K. 37 places higher than the U.S.
Many of the European countries clustered at the top of the list enforce laws that would be blatantly unconstitutional in America. Under Germany’s NetzDG law, platforms can face fines of up to €50 million if they fail to remove unlawful content within 24 hours. France (#25) has repeatedly pushed sweeping “fake news” regulations. Norway (#1), Denmark (#6), and Ireland (#7) have criminalized broad categories of “hateful” or “insulting” expression. These are aggressive speech-regulation regimes that directly shape what journalists and citizens may publish.
But while these countries float near the top of the WPFI, the U.S. — whose First Amendment offers the strongest legal protections for journalists and the broadest tolerance for controversial speech of any nation — is penalized precisely because its government cannot regulate content the way Brussels does. That’s not a measure of freedom. It’s a measure of conformity.
Then there’s the methodology. The WPFI ranking is largely based on questionnaires filled out by selected journalists, academics, and NGO staff — many from circles that share similar views about the need for tighter control over online speech. Academic research has documented “serious methodological problems” in these press freedom indices, particularly their reliance on subjective assessments. Countries that have adopted European-style platform regulations — such as liability laws, rapid-removal mandates, and state-backed oversight — consistently rank higher than those that have not. The pattern is clear: the more power a democratic government claims over online speech, the higher it climbs in the WPFI.
RSF does track real atrocities against journalists such as murders, disappearances, and imprisonment. Those components of the ranking are useful. The distortion comes when “modern threats” to free expression are redefined as insufficient government intervention against “hate” or “disinformation.” By that standard, the heavier the censorship apparatus, the freer the press.
The result is a distorted global ranking in which nations with criminal penalties for speech, centralized media regulators, and sweeping platform-control laws supposedly enjoy “more press freedom” than the United States. Countries that routinely send police to citizens’ doors over politically incorrect opinions are declared to have dozens more notches of press freedom than the one country where such overreach is constitutionally prohibited.
This matters because the WPFI is being weaponized in a geopolitical battle over who gets to set global speech rules. Brussels wants to position itself as the world’s information regulator, and citing a friendly ranking is a convenient way to bolster its authority.
When it comes to press freedom, America is not perfect. The New York Times is suing the Pentagon for restricting press access, journalists face SLAPP lawsuits, and media ownership is concentrated. These are real problems, but they differ fundamentally from a government that can force platforms to delete lawful speech on pain of ruinous fines.
If European countries want to celebrate their commitment to freedom of the press, they should stop pointing to a ranking they help fund that confuses censorship with protection. Real press freedom is not defined by how elegantly a government manages the information ecosystem. It’s defined by how willing the government is to leave speech alone — even when it’s messy, wrong, or unpopular.
By that standard, the United States hasn’t fallen behind. The WPFI has.