In 1986, opposition journalist Jose Carrasco Tapia was dragged from his home in Santiago, Chile, by one of General Augusto Pinochet’s death squads. He was shot 13 times in the back of his head and dumped in a cemetery, joining a macabre roll call of Latin American reporters brutalized for daring to speak out during the 1970s and 1980s.
During that time, kidnapping, torture and murder had a stranglehold over the Latin American press; stenography was an infinitely safer choice for those reporting the news. As Latin America became more democratic in the years since, more reporters chose to investigate instead of retyping government press releases.
Particularly by targeting government corruption, brave journalists made raiding the public till more of a gamble than a birthright — and angered many of the corrupt. Today, too many Latin governments, fearful of the media’s ability to expose misdeeds, have altered their tactics but remain determined to limit press freedom.
Latin American journalists may face a diminished threat of murder nowadays, but many still confront a gauntlet of challenges designed to control them. Behind closed doors, governments wield financial incentives and regulatory powers to mute media criticism and twist editorial content in their favor.
Without a critical press, Latin America’s undeniable advances toward real democracy — development of an informed, empowered citizenry and governments respectful of the legitimate boundaries of power — will be endangered, even as formal electoral trappings become more routine.
There is an alarming pattern of press manipulation throughout the region, from Honduran authorities cutting off a national radio station’s telephone service to Argentine officials shuttering a printing press. To varying degrees, local and national officials in these countries, and in Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, are collectively rewriting the authoritarian playbook.
Even more widespread than indirect repression is the corrupting pressure of government money. Across Latin America, advertising from the public sector is critical for the financial survival of newspapers and broadcast stations, but especially for local outlets. In Colombia, the routine is simple: Journalists who subsist on income derived from selling advertising space to government agencies call officials in the morning to get their story; later, when they must attempt to sell the same officials advertising, they find out the real cost of independent news coverage.
Likewise, in 2004, Costa Rica’s president decreed that his administration stop advertising in the country’s leading daily newspaper in retaliation for critical coverage. In 2006 and last year, Peru’s housing minister used government advertising contracts to tilt coverage of his ministry and himself in national newspapers.
Some governments practice an even more direct method of suborning favorable coverage. In Honduras, direct government payments to journalists are common, as are minimal or non-existent salaries for reporters. Some officials even require journalists to sign contracts mandating favorable coverage of government activities.
Throughout the region, government officials shut out those they regard as troublemakers and manipulate procedures for issuing broadcast licenses to benefit political allies or silence independent voices. As a result, self-censorship chills entire newsrooms and many noncommercial or alternative media are denied access to the airwaves.
All but the most courageous remain silent; with the threat of ruin for their paper or station, the risks reporters run are no longer primarily their own. At risk is the emerging diversity of opinion and reporting that has begun to invigorate the region’s traditionally staid and monopolistic media industry.
The picture is not all grim, and, ironically, reporting on news manipulation has helped galvanize politicians in some countries to create better and more enforceable rules of the road.
Steps such as fair, competitive and transparent public-sector contracting procedures, and civil servant, rather than political, control over allocation of government advertising funds would go a long way, especially combined with good reporting, to protect the media against the persistent temptation among officials to control what the public may know.
Carrasco Tapia died for his vision of critical oppositional journalism. It would be a tragedy if those who still want to control the media win by taking their tactics underground, behind closed doors. The threat they pose may be less dramatic, but it is no less pernicious.
Roberto Saba is executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Chile. Robert O. Varenik is the acting executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. The two organizations recently released The Price of Silence, a report on media censorship in Latin America.
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