Press freedom in the Americas suffered a “dramatic deterioration” last year, a regional watchdog said on Tuesday in an assessment of conditions for the profession in 23 countries across the western hemisphere.
The Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has been publishing an annual freedom of speech list, known as the Chapultepec index, since 2020. It evaluates how the US, Canada and Latin American countries do when it comes to protecting media freedoms.
“This has been one of the worst years in the region, with homicides, arbitrary arrests and impunity” for crimes committed against journalists, the organization said in its annual report.
Photo: AP
The index for last year ranked Venezuela and Nicaragua as nations “without freedom of speech,” while Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, Haiti, Cuba and El Salvador fall into the “high restriction” category. Other democracies including Canada, Brazil, Chile and Panama were ranked as countries with “low restrictions” on freedom of speech.
The US ranks as a nation with “restrictions” on freedom of speech, the IAPA said, adding that there were 170 attacks against journalists in the US last year.
Attacks during coverage of procedures undertaken by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had raised concerns about journalistic freedoms, it said.
In the US, “there was poor government action against disinformation, as well as government actions aimed at limiting free expression and access to information,” the researchers found.
US President Donald Trump and other White House officials have “stigmatized” media outlets that are critical of the administration, they added.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), another group that tracks attacks on press freedoms around the world, said that last year, 13 journalists were murdered in Latin America, almost twice as many as in 2024, when it registered seven murders.
CPJ Latin America coordinator Cristina Zahar said that press freedom and democracy in Latin America have suffered “important setbacks.”
“What CPJ has observed in the region are deliberate attacks by public agencies against the press with the objective of delegitimizing its work,” Zahar said in a WhatsApp message.
Many countries in the region are also using anti-terrorism laws, laws against cybercrimes and laws against nonprofit organizations to criminalize the work of journalists, she added.
Attacks on journalists have increased in the region as “authoritarian presidents” emerge in different countries, the IAPA said.
In Venezuela, “self-censorship” became the norm among local media outlets, which provided almost no coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize granted to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, fearing government reprisals, it said.
In Nicaragua censorship is “institutionalized,” with a constitutional reform that put all branches of government under the control of the presidency, the report said.
The report classifies El Salvador as a country with “high restrictions” on freedom of speech, saying that government officials try to intimidate journalists with lawsuits and criminal investigations.
The report said that 180 attacks against media workers were recorded in the Central American country between May and July last year.
There were 290 acts of aggression against journalists in Ecuador last year, including four murders, committed allegedly by criminal gangs. One journalist was also shot in the shoulder by police while broadcasting a protest organized by an indigenous community.
Haiti was included for the first time in the annual report and was ranked as one of the countries with the least press freedom in the Americas.
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