system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Unthreatening media-bashing should not be counted in a Press Freedom Index.

A recent Press Freedom Index score penalized the US for the President's verbal attacks on the media (calling them 'fake news' and the like).  I believe that this has nothing to do with freedom of the press.  Even if the government gets to put a logo on friendly media calling them "Verified" and calls unfriendly media fake or tabloid, that should still be totally irrelevant to the press freedom index unless that bashing can be expected to result in financial penalties, arrests, or beatings.

The only things that should count towards a press freedom index are the number of topics/words/viewpoints that will result in a financial, legal, or physical penalty for expressing.  Those can be official rules with legal penalties, informal calls for mobs to beat reporters, taxes on specific journals, or funding for compliant journals that is denied to noncompliant journals.
gpt
The Press Freedom Index doesn't exist for the benefit of the press. It's for the public. It allows people to gauge how much they should look at the media through the lens of undue government influence. 

It's fine for any political figure to respond to the press, and this response can be negative. However, to decry something as 'fake news' without any evidence, when the reporting appears to be true, is an unprovoked attack. 

Your hypothetical would be an even more extreme case. The press is not free if it has to carry a government logo making unbacked assertions about its reliability. Indeed, your measure's goal is to affect what stories are covered, compared to what might run in a free press. 

The Press Freedom Index would drop, and people could use this to reach a conclusion about how much of the news they saw was a result of government influence.