Since its release in early November, the Ranking Digital Rights inaugural Corporate Accountability Index has received worldwide media attention, demonstrating global interest in corporate respect for users’ rights.
In coordination with the launch of the Index on November 3rd, The Guardian newspaper published two in-depth analyses of the Index data and its implications:
- World’s biggest tech companies get failing grade on data-privacy rights
- ‘If this was a test, nearly everyone failed’: how tech giants deny your digital rights
Screenshot of Rebecca MacKinnon discussing RDR’s Index on the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal channel.
The RDR team has been interviewed and invited to write pieces about the Index. Rebecca MacKinnon discussed the findings on the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal channel and with Deutsche Welle. Priya Kumar talked about the Index on the Digital Show on Sirius XM’s Wharton Business Radio channel. Allon Bar wrote about the Index in a guest post for the Measuring Business and Human Rights project, based at the London School of Economics. He also talked about the results on the German Info-radio.
In addition, news about RDR’s Index and its findings appeared in NBC News, Fast Company, Ars Technica, Bloomberg Brief, Fortune, SFGate, TechWeek Europe, Hacked, WNYC, Information Week, CXO Today, IT ProPortal, WebProNews, Beta News, SC Magazine, TechWorm and Digit (India).
An Agence France-Presse story about the Index was syndicated around the world, including The Times of India, The Economic Times (India), Malay Mail Online, The Malaysian Insider, Free Malaysia Today, The Star (Malaysia) The Business Times (Singapore), The Bangkok Post, The Manila Times, Interaksyon (The Philippines) The Peninsula (Qatar), The Citizen (South Africa), France24, and Le Figaro (in French). International outlets also covered the story: la Repubblica (in Italian), Süddeutsche Zeitung and Taz (both in German) and NU.nl and WebWereld (both in Dutch). The Institute for Human Rights and Business, Article 19 and the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote about the Index.
Media are already using RDR’s Index to provide context when discussing digital rights issues. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn referenced the Index results in a story about Facebook’s updated transparency report. ThinkProgress highlighted the Index in an explanation of how the U.S. Congress struggles to craft cybersecurity legislation that respects individual privacy rights. OpenDemocracy underlined RDR’s findings in its argument that technology companies endanger their reputations by ignoring digital rights. Another post on the LSE’s Measuring Business and Human Rights project blog explains how rankings such as RDR’s Index can spur company action.
Stay tuned for more from the RDR team in the coming weeks and months!
