Freedom of press suffered a clear setback in the Americas

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – This is the assessment made by Carlos Jornet, chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), as the 77th General Assembly of that organization began this Tuesday in virtual format.

Seventeen journalists have been murdered since the previous General Assembly, also held virtually in October 2020. Of those murders, nine occurred since last April, when the annual interim Assembly took place.

Six journalists died violently in Mexico, one in Colombia, one in Brazil, and one in Haiti, says Jornet, of the Argentine daily La Voz del Interior, about these latest cases of the most extreme harassment a journalist can suffer for their work.

BIGGEST JOURNALIST KILLER

“Organized crime is the main culprit and, in the second instance, groups linked to the different powers,” he explained. “What is most worrying is the impunity,” he adds, pointing out that in most cases, neither the police manage to find the perpetrators nor the justice system works to convict them.

But physical violence is not the only problem facing the press in the hemisphere.

The reports on the situation in each country, prepared by the respective deputy directors of Freedom of the Press and Information, paint a rather dark picture with mentions of harassment and stigmatization of the media, censorship, closures, and legislation that hinders the work of journalists.

The closures of the newspapers El Nacional of Caracas and La Prensa of Managua are two other black spots in the press freedom panorama, which will give rise to debates in this Assembly.

As for the rants of power against the press, cataloged as “stigmatization”, he stresses that presidents such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of Mexico, Jair Bolsonaro, of Brazil, and sectors of the new government of Peru “play with fire” when they present journalists and the media as enemies of the people. “That discourse encourages violence” against journalists, the IAPA executive stressed.

LACKING TRANSPARENCY

Another worrying issue in the last year was the restrictions on access to public information, precisely when “transparency was most needed” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jornet explains that this is a concern both because of the public’s need for such information to protect itself and the public purchases made by governments in emergencies and subject to less control.

He stresses that it is a problem that occurs in all types of countries, from Canada and the United States to almost all of Latin America.

Many executives have governed during the pandemic by decree without going through the legislature. They have used the need to combat disinformation as an excuse to regulate the Internet and social networks and impose limitations on freedom of expression.

AXIS OF DICTATORSHIPS

In reports from countries where social protests have taken place, as in the case of the United States or Colombia, there are complaints that the police acted with force against journalists without considering that they were doing their job.

On Wednesday 20, a panel on “Freedom of the press and the Axis of dictatorships: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela” is scheduled, followed by another on “Freedom of the press and lack of judicial independence”, referring to the cases of El Salvador and Argentina, among other countries.

“The dictatorship loses the battle on the Internet and fights not to lose the street as well. This has been the most difficult semester for Cubans and the dictatorship in the last 25 years”, begins the report on Cuba, still pending approval by the Assembly, in which it is pointed out that the repression unleashed by the authorities after the protests of July 11 has reached “a dimension” never seen before.

Venezuela’s report states that “the attacks on freedom of expression have intensified during this period” and that of Nicaragua that “during these six months the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has continued with its attacks on journalists and the media.”

During the IAPA General Assembly, the results of the Chapultepec Index, which measures the state of press freedom in each country of the continent for the last year, will be presented.

Jornet said that at the bottom of the list are Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, with the worst, and that there are countries like Argentina that have dropped “quite a few” positions and others like the Dominican Republic that have improved and moved up in the table, in both cases coinciding with changes of government.

Uruguay, Chile, and Costa Rica remain in high positions.

Soon the IAPA will present an interactive tool that, with the help of artificial intelligence, makes it possible to know how the press freedom climate is in a country based on measurements in social networks.