| | |  Travel Writers' Resources | September 2009 
LatAm Journalists Face New Opposition
 Alexei Barrionuevo - New York Times
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September 08, 2009
Rio De Janeiro - For the family of José Sarney, Brazil's Senate president, the daily onslaught of newspaper reports about nepotism and corruption accusations against him was too much to bear.
So Mr. Sarney's son Fernando, who manages most of the family's private businesses, turned to a federal judge in Brasília, winning an injunction to stop a leading newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, from publishing any more reports about the allegations.
The court's action, in late July, immediately raised cries of censorship. It was widely seen here as a setback after important strides in removing restrictions to a free press, including a decision in April by Brazil's Supreme Court to strike down a dictatorship-era law that imposed harsh penalties for slander and libel.
Beyond Brazil, though, the Sarney case has underscored concerns across Latin America that despite a decade defined by the rise of populist leaders who have promised to help the downtrodden, many judges continue to bow to the whims of the powerful in censoring journalists.
In recent months, journalists across the region have faced opposition not only from courts but also from the leaders of several countries, who have moved to restrict critical coverage and paint the news media as the enemy.
That tendency has been especially glaring in Venezuela. Since taking office in 1999, the government of President Hugo Chávez has pursued strategies to limit the independence of the media, including the recent endorsement of a move to revoke the licenses of dozens of radio stations and approval this month of an education law that would further restrict the media.
"What is happening in Venezuela you can see in other parts of Latin America," said Carlos Lauría, senior Americas program coordinator with the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York. In Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Argentina, in particular, he said, leaders "are reacting with a lot of intolerance to criticism in the media."
President Evo Morales of Bolivia has described the press as the main enemy of the government. In Nicaragua, President Ortega has described the private media as CIA-financed "children of Goebbels."
His wife, Rosario Murillo, is the government's chief of communications. Critical journalists have faced smear campaigns by official government media outlets intended to discredit independent reporters, Mr. Lauría said.
In Brazil, the Sarney case is just the latest example of a lower court's accepting a request to prevent a media outlet from broadcasting or publishing reports on suspected corruption.
Lawyers for the Sarneys have called O Estado's articles libelous and denied the accusations. The injunction came as the Senate's ethics council - controlled by supporters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an ally of Mr. Sarney - considered 11 allegations against Mr. Sarney for possible impeachment.
Mr. Gandour called the injunction unconstitutional. He said the paper was appealing the court's decision and continuing its investigation.
BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS
José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, said Venezuela was the "noticeable exception" to a trend in Latin America over the last decade toward "gradual but sustainable progress" in the area of free speech. "The region has been able to move in the right direction," he said, "mostly thanks to the leadership taken by superior courts - either constitutional or supreme courts."
Countries in the region have also been moving to enact laws to grant all citizens access to information. Mexico was the first to draft such a law, at the beginning of the decade.
The latest example is Chile, which put its law in place in April. It has already resulted in the release by government officials of requested information, including an admission in July by the country's economy minister that Chile was using hundreds of times more antibiotics in its salmon farming than a rival producer, Norway.
The government in Brazil proposed a similar law in May that Congress has yet to vote on. |
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