OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT! TRUMP BLOCKS FREEDOM OF THE PRESS!
Posted on 03/19/2026 5:16:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
“The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history,” one of the world’s top democracy researchers says in a new report.
The Varieties of Democracies Institute, or V-Dem, a research group based in Sweden, cites the “suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices” as a key reason for the “derailment of democracy” in the United States.
The researchers say that freedom of expression in the US “is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.”
The findings are featured in the 2026 edition of V-Dem’s annual Democracy Report, which finds that the US and 43 other countries are “autocratizing” while only 12 are becoming more democratic.
The researchers compile detailed datasets and produce “liberal democracy index” scores for 202 countries and territories altogether.
This year’s report describes what the researchers call a “bleak reality” for citizens: The ‘center of gravity’ for human experience and global governance has shifted heavily toward authoritarianism.”
V-Dem is housed at the University of Gothenburg and is funded by several Swedish institutions, the European Commission, the World Bank, the National Science Foundation in the US and other organizations.
Right-wing critics of V-Dem sometimes deride it as “Soros-funded” because the Open Society Foundation, founded by George Soros, is one of its many funders.
The researchers say Trump’s first term was “laying a foundation,” but his second term has been much more significant, with a “rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.”
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
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Press freedumb perhaps. They’ve never been more free to lie constantly. Lies without end almond!
OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT! TRUMP BLOCKS FREEDOM OF THE PRESS!
These people are absolute clowns and liars, smelly apes. It is places like the UK where free speech is being punished and the government arrests people for expressing the “wrong” views. In the US, the left is constantly trying to deplatform and shut down conservative websites.
Do you agree with them?
Seems to me a lot of people say whatever nonsense comes into their minds.
Not sure where the oppression is these days.
“The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history,”
https://www.lerctr.org/~transit/healy/crap.wav
LOL are they for real, after what they did after Jan 6th throwing GRANDMOTHERS in prison for taking selfies at the capitol they should really shut their traps
I wish we had a Pinochet Trump who would teach these losers a lesson they won't forget.
Republic- not a democracy.
If Stelter wants a good example of the suppression of freedom of speech all he has to do is watch how the token conservatives are treated on leftist news programming or leftist opinion shows - including and often particularly those on CNN.
People like Stelter, and Lemon, and ‘stop the hammering’ O'Donnell see their lives through the lens of their self-perceived achievement, fame, and celebrity - mixed with a delusional sense of having great impact on the course of the world. It's ego on steroids, and that ego prohibits them from having humility and/or an open mind.
Brian Stelter reporting? LOL. You’d be closer to reality by citing a woodchuck
Or, Mark Kelly!
Same diff.
I smell BS. I mean BiaS.
RE: Do you agree with them?
Compared to Europe? Nope.
Sounds like we’re moving in the right direction, away from mob rule.
Tater is such a tool. He should be concerned about “press freedom” to lie and make up crap.
CNN isn’t looking for freedom. They are looking for immunity. Print what they want, when you want, however you want.
OMG… the sheer hypocrisy
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