Latin America's press not this bullied in decades
by Andres Oppenheimer
By almost every standard -- whether it's government censorship, intimidation of reporters or drug gang killings of journalists -- freedom of the press in Latin America is going through its worst moment since the right-wing military dictatorships of the 1970s.
Consider the latest reports from press freedom groups:
In Cuba, which the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders lists as one of the world's biggest prisons for journalists, the level of censorship has reached surrealist levels. The government recently sentenced independent journalist Oscar Sánchez Madán to four years in prison for ``pre-criminal dangerousness.''
In other words, Sánchez Madán is not rotting in jail for something he said or wrote but for something he could have said or written. There are at least 28 independent Cuban journalists in jail for their writings, some of them sentenced to prison terms of more than 20 years, according to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).
At the same time, the Cuban dictatorship is cracking down on clandestine TV antennas, as well as restricting access to the Internet, and censoring it. Cuba is the hemisphere's most backward country in terms of Internet access, with fewer Internet-connected people on a per capita basis than Haiti.
Mexico has surpassed Colombia to become the world's second-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq, as drug gangs are killing, kidnapping and intimidating an unprecedented number of reporters.
Last week, TV Azteca reporter Gamaliel López Candanosa and cameraman Gerardo Paredes disappeared in Monterrey. They are still missing. Last month, Televisa's Acapulco correspondent, Amado Ramírez, was gunned down, the most recent of nearly 10 journalists believed to have been killed because of their work since the beginning of 2006.
Why are drug gangs targeting reporters? Because reporters are exposing the police, military and state government officials who protect the drug traffickers, leading journalists tell me. Such intimidation is resulting in growing self-censorship, especially in local state media.
In Venezuela, narcissist-Leninist President Hugo Chávez has proudly announced that he is going ahead with plans to strip the RCTV television network of its license on May 27. RCTV is Venezuela's most independent free-access television network, and it is scheduled to be replaced by a new government-run network.
This will in effect mean that, from now on, Venezuela will only allow limited criticism on paid cable television and in print media, which reach a relatively small segment of the population.
Chávez makes no bones about his intent to censor the media. As far back as Jan. 26, 2003, Chávez said that ``nobody in the world should be surprised if in Venezuela, within a short time, we start closing down television stations. No freedom is unlimited.''
In Ecuador, Chávez-backed populist President Rafael Correa is suing the chairman of the daily newspaper La Hora, demanding that he be sent to prison for saying that the presidential office was behind recent pro-government groups that staged violent demonstrations against the opposition.
The Correa government is intimidating all other independent media, saying that it intends to sue any news outlet that publishes what it deems to be ''unsubstantiated'' reports.
My opinion: While it's bad enough that censorship and self-censorship are making a comeback in the region -- this time brought about mostly by leftist petro-populist leaders -- worse is the fact that few countries are raising their voices against it.
When I recently asked José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the 34-country Organization of American States, about Chávez's plans to close RCTV, Insulza noted that he had criticized Venezuela for this a month earlier, but that no single OAS member country had raised this issue at the regional organization.
''There is only so much the secretary general can do,'' Insulza shrugged.
That's what's most troubling. And, unfortunately, the United States has lost its own moral standing to point its finger at others because of its own judicial pressures on journalists to reveal confidential sources.
By failing to uphold the long-standing rule that countries should collectively defend democracy and freedom of the press, Latin America's democracies are undermining their own future freedoms. Today, press freedom is under attack in Venezuela. Tomorrow, barring a collective regional outcry, it will happen elsewhere, and there will be no collective pressure to stop it.
Source: Miami Herald
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