On the other hand why don't you try your opinion out that 137 out of 167 is a whitewash on impartial people and see what they think about that. Let me know what they say after you are done. ********************
Given the numbers, the USA in Iraq being anywhere other than at or near the bottom is a great whitewash. The rest of the ranking doesn't make sense either.
More fundamentally. . . .
Lenin writes that, "[a]s Chalmers Johnson records (in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic), the US now trains military elites for 70% of the world's nations, either in domestic institutions like the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the School of the Americas), or through surreptitious 'meetings' in which 'advisors' sidestep legislation by providing equipment on the quiet" (at <http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/10/iron-curtain-and-cloth-wall.html>).
Given that state power is ultimately defended by power of repression, we can say that Washington is partly and indirectly responsible for the lack of political freedom, of which press freedom is a part, in 70% of the world. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/