Cartagena, Colombia – Some leftist governments in Latin America have become increasingly intolerant of criticism, while journalists in the United States have come under growing pressure to identify their sources, delegates at a regional newspaper industry meeting said Saturday.
The Miami-based Inter American Press Association received reports on press freedoms from members across the Western Hemisphere at the start of a four-day meeting in the Colombian city of Cartagena. IAPA represents more than 1,300 newspapers in the region.
The U.S. report called for a federal “shield” law barring judges and prosecutors from obliging reporters to reveal sources they have pledged to protect. More than 30 U.S. states have such laws.
“Today perhaps more than ever there is pressure for journalists to identify the people who talk with them – including when the information discussed in those conversations wasn’t even published,” Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor of The Washington Post, told the gathering.
Calls for a federal shield law have gained momentum in the wake of the CIA leak trial. Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted of lying about his role in exposing an undercover CIA officer based on the testimony of several journalists. Most testified unwillingly, under court order.
Mexico’s delegation reported an alarming number of journalists killed on orders from drug gangs: seven since October, along with two disappearances and eight cases of reporters receiving death threats.
“I would say Mexico has become the country (in the Western Hemisphere) where it’s most dangerous to be a journalist today,” said Gonzalo Marroquin, president of IAPA’s press freedom commission.
In the past decade, Colombia has been the third most dangerous country for journalists after Iraq and Russia, with 72 killed, according to the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute. However, no journalist has been killed in Colombia in the past six months.
Marroquin said press freedoms have deteriorated in a number of countries over the past year, especially where leftists have won elections.
“In Venezuela, where I would say President Hugo Chavez’s authoritarianism is absolute, and elsewhere where restrictions on the press are becoming more and more repressive, there is also an apparent tendency to try to limit access to information,” said Marroquin, editor of the newspaper Prensa Libre of Guatemala.
Press freedom watchdogs have accused Chavez of using the judiciary and new legislation restricting broadcast content to silence critics. Chavez denies threatening press freedoms and accuses Venezuela’s privately owned media of conspiring to topple his government.
In Bolivia, President Evo Morales’ government “doesn’t appear comfortable” with press freedom, and news reports critical of its actions are often called “part of a plot against its stability,” that country’s delegation said.
Morales has complained that much of Bolivia’s media is biased against him and says he wants to open more government-friendly media outlets.
Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez has accused various news media of conspiring to question his competency through “immoral, injurious and untruthful” reports, Uruguay’s delegation said.
Ecuador’s delegation said newly elected President Rafael Correa has accused his country’s media of being in the service of “ousted political mafias”
