In recent months journalists have suffered setbacks in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina as courts and leaders move to restrict coverage and demonize the press. -DB

The New York Times
August 31, 2009
By Alexei Barrionuevo

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 São Paulo, from publishing any more reports about the allegations.

The court’s action, in late July in the midst of a drawn-out battle in the Senate over Mr. Sarney’s future, 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 Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, the government’s chief of communications, have described the private media as C.I.A.-financed “children of Goebbels.” 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. A string of news media reports have charged that José Sarney used his position as Senate president to award jobs to friends and family, and that he held an illegal bank account, among other claims.

After O Estado began running articles detailing transcripts of telephone calls recorded by the police, in which Fernando Sarney discussed business deals and his father’s Senate influence, the younger Mr. Sarney reached out to the judge in Brasília, Dácio Vieira, who granted the injunction.

Lawyers for the Sarneys have called O Estado’s articles libelous and denied the accusations against José and Fernando Sarney. 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.

On Aug. 12, the president of the ethics council, Paulo Duque, discarded all the allegations; Mr. Duque later explained his decision by saying the charges were based only on “media reports.”

But Ricardo Gandour, O Estado’s editor in chief, said, “The recordings show a senator with his son and close family members negotiating jobs and benefits as if the Senate were a private company, the property of the family.”

Mr. Gandour called the injunction unconstitutional. He said the paper was appealing the court’s decision and continuing its investigation.
In Venezuela, Mr. Chávez and his supporters have been stepping up efforts to restrict news media coverage. After he denounced in late July what he called a private media “tyranny” on the airwaves, regulators revoked the licenses of 34 of the country’s radio stations, saying they were not properly licensed.

Venezuela’s information minister, Blanca Eekhout, said those responsible for “media lies” should face criminal charges. A draft law on “media crimes” presented to the legislature at the end of July makes it an offense, punishable by imprisonment, to provide false information that is deemed to harm the interests of the state or pose a security threat.

On Aug. 3, more than 30 armed pro-government militants stormed the offices of a private broadcaster, Globovisión, setting off tear gas. The station, known for its strident criticism of Mr. Chávez’s government, has been the target of continued government harassment, with Venezuelan regulators opening five administrative proceedings against it, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Then, just days ago, a dozen journalists who were marching peacefully to protest the new education law were intercepted by Chávez supporters and beaten with sticks, according to photos of the incident. The government at first condemned the attack, but more recently said the journalists had provoked their attackers. The education law prohibits “the dissemination of ideas and doctrines contrary to the national sovereignty and the hallowed principles and values in the Constitution.”

A vote in February to change Venezuela’s Constitution and allow for indefinite re-election emboldened the Chávez government to go after the media more forcefully, said Marcelino Bisbal, a media professor at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas. “From that moment, the government began a war to neutralize, control and construct ways to self-censor and intimidate the media.”

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.

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company