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Monday, January 17, 2011

Some more statistics HRW vs. Freedom House

After yesterday's post showing that HRW's Middle East/North Africa focus was so skewed, I wanted to look a little further.

The weak negative correlation between the Freedom House findings and HRW's focus is all because of Israel. The -0.12 correlation turns into +0.31 if Israel is taken out of the calculations.

Thanks to commenter RuthieofAmerica and my own efforts, I added the statistics for the Americas, most of Asia/Pacific, and Europe. (No sub-Saharan Africa at this time.)

There is one other area of the world where one can see a similar heavily disproportionate focus, and that is the Americas. The correlation between the two is a very weak 0.07, but if you take out the United States from the equation, it turns into a much stronger 0.42. This is because HRW mentions the US far, far more than any other country, over 14,000 times according to Google, more than double the next country I have statistics for (Pakistan.)

The correlation for Western Europe was 0.47 and for Asia/Pacific 0.27 (I didn't include some of the tiny island nations.) For Eastern Europe it is 0.25.

Keep in mind that the Freedom House score is between 2 and 14.

Using a very rough calculation, one can see that compared to Freedom House's numbers, HRW is most biased against the United States (14700/4), France (3710/2), Israel (3940/3), the UK (1740/2), Hungary (1400/2), Australia (1330/2) and Canada (1280/2.)

On the other hand, HRW does not give nearly the proper attention to South Ossetia, Brunei (258/11), Laos, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Oman (328/11), Qatar, and Bahrain, with countries like Algeria, Libya (1240/14), Yemen, Cuba, the UAE and Syria (1510/13) not far behind.

In the middle, with what appears to be a proportional focus by HRW, we see Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia, China and Iran.

Here are the numbers I have so far, in rough order from HRW under-reporting to over-reporting. (My formula was a simple one: HRW mentions / (FW score - 1). )

Country
HRW
FH
Northern Cyprus 9 4
Nagorno-Karabakh 101 10
SouthOssetia 198 13
Dominica 18 2
Abkhazia 197 10
Paraguay 115 6
Tajikistan 249 11
Brunei 258 11
Laos 356 13
Moldova 178 7
Turkmenistan 404 14
North Korea 413 14
Oman 328 11
Mongolia 113 4
Bosnia-Herzegovina 228 7
Nicaragua 294 8
Qatar 456 11
Armenia 411 10
Bahrain 460 11
Latvia 108 3
Macedonia 276 6
Trinidad/Tobago 168 4
Montenegro 230 5
Guyana 250 5
Haiti 512 9
Panama 129 3
Azerbaijan 655 11
Belarus 792 13
Algeria 787 11
Kazakhstan 799 11
Singapore 649 9
Bolivia 408 6
Uzbekistan 1070 14
Albania 412 6
Guatemala 730 9
Kyrgyzstan 933 11
Libya 1240 14
Yemen 999 11
Bulgaria 315 4
San Marino 106 2
Romania 319 4
Suriname 320 4
Cuba 1070 11
Lithuania 107 2
Antigua/Barbuda 450 5
Estonia 115 2
Honduras 839 8
UAE 1200 11
Liechtenstein 122 2
Syria 1510 13
Bangladesh 767 7
Dominican-Republic 384 4
Iceland 130 2
Jordan 1300 11
Morocco 1060 9
Monaco 272 3
Tunisia 1530 12
Kuwait 1130 9
Puerto-Rico 142 2
StVincent/Grenadines 294 3
Malaysia 1040 8
Kosovo 1210 9
Taiwan 308 3
Burma 2030 14
Luxembourg 157 2
Slovenia 161 2
Georgia 1140 8
Thailand 1330 9
Ecuador 871 6
Grenada 356 3
Peru 738 5
Belize 371 3
Vietnam 2070 12
Egypt 1930 11
Jamaica 776 5
Lebanon 1450 8
Iraq 2170 11
Afghanistan 2510 12
Nepal 1610 8
Serbia 718 4
Colombia 1440 7
South Korea 483 3
Finland 260 2
New Zealand 262 2
CzechRep 265 2
Brazil 833 4
Turkey 1400 6
Croatia 569 3
SaintKitts/Nevis 287 2
Greece 602 3
Malta 308 2
Costa-Rica 311 2
Barbados 318 2
Cyprus 320 2
Saint-Lucia 326 2
Ukraine 1340 5
Argentina 1010 4
Bahamas 339 2
Saudi Arabia 4140 13
Slovakia 345 2
Andorra 347 2
El-Salvador 1490 5
Cambodia 4110 11
Venezuela 3320 9
Mexico 1680 5
Poland 420 2
China 5080 13
Austria 430 2
Russia 4300 11
Italy 869 3
Uruguay 436 2
Japan 964 3
Iran 5730 12
Denmark 548 2
Indonesia 2370 5
Switzerland 597 2
Ireland 602 2
Pakistan 5710 9
Sweden 721 2
Belgium 747 2
Norway 768 2
Netherlands 997 2
Portugal 1020 2
Chile 1070 2
Germany 1080 2
India 4400 5
Spain 1140 2
Canada 1280 2
Australia 1330 2
Hungary 1400 2
UK 1740 2
Israel 3940 3
France 3710 2
USA 14700 4