Inter-American Society warns of deteriorating press freedom in America

The director of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Michael Greenspon, warned of the deterioration of freedom of the press in America in the last seven years and denounced in an interview with EFE the situation in several Latin American countries, especially Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, where “the only freedom of expression is allowed by the government.”

“Until 2015, we saw an improvement in democracy and a relaxation in freedom of the press, but in the last five or seven years there has been an increase in authoritarianism on the American continent and people manipulating and shutting down media outlets when they can,” said Greenspon, who gave an interview before traveling to Guatemala, where he plans to meet with political leaders.

In a room at the newspaper “The New York Times”, where Greenspon works as global director of licensing and graphic innovation, the head of the IAPA stressed that the “first and main mission” of the entity “is the defense of freedom of the press and freedom of expression,” goals that are in line with those he and his newspaper defend.

DEFENDER OF PRESS FREEDOM

A law graduate with a previous career at the “Boston Globe” and the “Washington Post”, he confesses that he attended law school thinking about defending “the freedom of the press contained in the First Amendment [of the US Constitution] and defending journalists and media through the law.”

“Threats to freedom of expression are more present than we’ve probably seen in 20 years,” he commented, before underlining that when the SIP was created, 80 years ago, “the situation, in a way, was like it is now: there could be no complaints from within countries.”

In this sense, he stated that this week he will travel to Guatemala to “exercise international pressure” in a preventive way.

“In Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua there is no freedom of expression and there is only freedom to express yourself in the way the government allows you. Guatemala is perhaps not at an extreme like these three countries, but there is a hardening of freedom of expression,” he pointed out

MURDERED JOURNALISTS

Greenspon also mentioned Mexico, where 20 of the 40 journalists killed last year on the continent died.

“There is an increase in government verbal attacks on journalism, and also an increase in the murders of journalists, and we see that the police and the government do not always make an effort to deal with this. Whether explicit or implicit, there does seem to be some permission (of the authorities), which is why we have asked the Mexican government, on several occasions, to investigate and prosecute the murders of journalists,” he noted.

For him, authoritarian governments, which “can be democratically elected”, when “they don’t want a free and open democracy, one of the first things they do is limit the means of communication, and we are seeing this more and more throughout the American continent.”

“In the US, some attacks are not as direct as they used to be, but politicians have been successful in attacking the media. We are a useful scapegoat for them and this has continued. If we say something that someone doesn’t like, they they attack us for it,” he reported, before indirectly pointing to both the Republican and Democratic parties and insisting that although the situation has improved, the environment remains “difficult.”

UNCERTAIN FUTURE FOR PRESS VEHICLES

In addition to defending press freedom, another of Greenspon’s priorities during his year at the helm of the IAPA is to fight for the increasingly threatened survival of the media in the face of funding difficulties.

Greenspon mentioned the importance of digital platforms that pay media outlets for the use of their information and governments that draft laws to prevent many from closing in the short term.

The director of the Inter-American Press Association also wants the big technology companies to offer the media the help they need to develop the digital transformation necessary to avoid shipwreck in the ocean of the internet in the long term.

“We have been meeting regularly with the platforms, especially with Google, to try to make them pay directly to the media for the content they are using, but also to support the press and digital transformations,” he explained, before expressing optimism that his year in office “will see progress and an increase in payments to America’s media outlets.”

With information from Gazeta do Povo

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