[tremon]

But "there has been a degradation of information quality" was not the phrase used by the initial poster. Maybe I should have quoted both the parent and grandparent together to make it clear what I was responding to, but I figured people would ignore the parent's attempt to rephrase the argument.

I also disagree that the US ranking fell because of the emergence of new information: it fell because of how it responded to that information. If you read the RSF quote, none of the reasons given are because of the contents of Snowden's or Manning's leaks. Instead, they mention the legal response to those and other cases, and they mention the lack of effective legal protection for "disclosing information in the public interest".