October 25, 2026
October 25, 2026
Dear colleagues and friends,
I am deeply honored and grateful for this appointment. I will do my utmost to live up to this responsibility, working hard and bringing together everyone willing to contribute.
Times are accelerating, and what is at stake is not only the sustainability of the independent press but also democratic institutions.
We need creative, innovative, and bold ideas to strengthen our defense of freedom of expression, the free exercise of journalism, and the survival of media outlets in an increasingly adverse environment.
But before delving into our action plan, allow me to share a few personal reflections.
When I began participating more regularly in IAPA activities some two decades ago, I thought I would be able to help defend freedom of expression and freedom of the press; that I would find opportunities to exchange experiences with colleagues from across the continent; that I would have the chance to learn about trends in the news industry; and that I would be able to forge new friendships.
I must be completely honest with you: over all these years, I have not managed to accomplish a single one of the things I set out to do.
Yes, you heard me right: I have not accomplished a single one of those goals. I accomplished all of them. And much more.
I met wonderful people; experienced firsthand the realities of other cultures; took part in valuable missions to defend threatened journalists and media outlets; and met with political and social leaders who genuinely wanted to do good—and with others who sought only to tear down institutions for their own personal gain.
I attended conferences both as a participant and as a speaker. Every one of those experiences helped me grow, reflect, and look toward the future.
All of this has become an essential part of my life.
What I value most is the warmth and affection I always feel at these gatherings.
I am grateful for the timely advice of the former presidents I worked with while chairing the Press Freedom Committee: Jorge Canahuati, Michael Greenspon, Roberto Rock, and José Roberto Dutriz. And over the past year, I have had the pleasure of contributing, as First Vice President, to the work of the person I now succeed, Pierre Manigault.
To all of them, my heartfelt thanks.
I also thank my colleagues on the Executive Committee, the leaders of past generations who helped build the IAPA’s reputation, and each of you for entrusting me with the leadership of this institution, which we need so much at a time like this for the press.
To our Executive Director, Carlos Lauría, and the team he leads: Melba Jiménez, Martha Estrada, Paola Dirube, Julieta Long, Mariana Belloso, and Horacio Ruiz.
To Ricardo Trotti, who, even after his retirement, guided me through every stage of my journey within the organization.
On a more personal note, I thank my wife and life partner, Estela, and our son Andrés, with whom I share a passion for building a better world.
And I also thank our firstborn, Simón, who will always remain in our hearts and guide our steps, even though he is no longer with us.
They are an essential part of my professional journey, and without their companionship and emotional support, I would not be standing here today.
I began these remarks by speaking about how rapidly times are changing.
The priorities of the administration we are beginning today build on the work of previous administrations, with a commitment to maintaining momentum, broadening participation, and strengthening ties with other sectors. We need to adapt to an era of dizzying technological change and growing institutional deterioration.
Democratic decline is spreading across the Americas, with few exceptions, although its intensity varies from country to country.
And this phenomenon is no longer confined to autocratic or dictatorial regimes. New technological powers are also distorting public debate.
Journalists are being killed, imprisoned, forced into exile, or subjected to judicial persecution. Media outlets are being shut down, confiscated, or subjected to economic pressure. Confrontational rhetoric and digital platforms are being used to threaten, discredit, and spread disinformation.
From one end of the continent to the other, a hostile environment for journalism is taking hold.
In many cases, political leaders not only fail to act to stop verbal or physical violence but actually encourage it through stigmatization, denunciations, and insults.
Our institution is strong.
Our voice carries weight.
Our convictions remain unwavering.
But what brought us this far will not be enough to meet the challenges ahead.
We need to amplify our message and reach every corner of the continent.
We need to convince political and business leaders that the priority of the moment is to strengthen a free and powerful press.
Because every time a media outlet goes dark, the flames of intolerance and disinformation grow stronger, hate speech spreads, and institutions are undermined.
Across vast areas of the continent, news deserts are proliferating as local media outlets disappear, depriving citizens of vital sources of information and undermining the life of small communities.
We must convey a fundamental conviction to every person in the Americas: a free press is not a privilege for journalists or an interest exclusive to media companies. It is a citizen's right and an essential condition for democracy.
Without democracy, there may be a temporary illusion of well-being. But sooner or later, authoritarianism, corruption, poverty, and intolerance will deepen.
As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explain in How Democracies Die, democracies do not decline only through coups. They also erode gradually when norms deteriorate, polarization intensifies, and institutions are unable to resolve conflicts without excluding segments of society.
In the face of this risk, a strong and responsible press is indispensable: it investigates, verifies facts, holds power to account, and makes inclusive public debate possible.
Social media offers enormous opportunities for interaction, but its dynamics also fuel confrontation and disinformation. Rigorous reporting, fact-checking, and cross-checking sources require professional work, editorial responsibility, and time.
In his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV warns of the dangers of indifference to truth. Quoting Hannah Arendt, he notes that “the ideal subjects of totalitarian rule are not the convinced Nazis or convinced Communists, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction [...] no longer exists.”
That is precisely one of the great challenges of our time.
For this reason, we must defend the sustainability of journalism, which is now threatened by declining traditional advertising, changing news consumption habits, the transformation of subscription models, falling digital traffic, and the zero-click strategies of major global platforms that exploit our content to attract and monetize audiences.
Media companies are not enemies of technology. We have always innovated, sought new ways to connect with people, and developed better solutions for advertisers.
We are also rapidly incorporating artificial intelligence to optimize processes and improve our services.
We are not technophobic, as some would have us believe. We deeply value initiatives such as Google's Google News Initiative (GNI), which help accelerate the digital transformation of media outlets.
Year after year, the participation of our members in SIP Connect demonstrates our companies' and newsrooms' determination to learn, experiment, and innovate.
But innovation does not mean passively accepting the rules of an ecosystem that threatens our very survival. It is clear that the future of media is being constrained, distorted, and suffocated.
AI is remarkable. Its potential is enormous.
At the same time, AI is delivering the biggest blow yet to journalism's sustainability.
Are we free of responsibility? Of course not. We must produce useful, high-quality content, strengthen our credibility, deepen our relationships with audiences, and demonstrate the irreplaceable value of professional journalism.
But all these efforts will be in vain if artificial intelligence platforms can appropriate the value of our reporting and investigations, use them to generate answers that displace the original sources, and thereby undermine our visibility, revenue, and relevance to the public.
This practice, along with training AI models on copyrighted journalistic content without authorization or compensation, amounts to appropriating other people's work and is ethically and economically unacceptable.
This is not merely an intellectual property violation. It is theft—a form of exploitation of journalistic labor that undermines the basic principles of fairness and reciprocity.
At a time when alarms are being raised about the risks of AI misuse, including its potential exploitation by rival powers or terrorist groups, few pay attention when we protest the unauthorized use of our content without compensation. But turning a deaf ear to this warning could amplify other risks.
AI developers and CEOs warn of the dangers of losing control over their creations, yet we do not hear them acknowledge that the misuse of these technologies weakens journalism, fuels disinformation, deepens polarization, and erodes public trust.
And when authoritarian governments gain ground, these risks become even more serious and harder to contain.
Professional journalism plays an essential role in democracy: it provides verified information, promotes informed debate, strengthens accountability, and helps protect human rights.
That is why we are not raising a commercial dispute between companies. We are defending media pluralism and the public's right to access reliable information.
Without fair compensation for the use of our content, the economic independence of media outlets is at risk, as is society's ability to continue relying on truthful and diverse information.
And if journalism is weakened, our voice will grow weaker. Authoritarian attacks will face less resistance, and democracy will have fewer defenses.
It is a profoundly unfair paradox: those of us who sustain the information ecosystem end up financing those who erode it.
Protecting journalism means preserving institutions, countering violence, reducing polarization, and fostering more balanced economic and social development.
For this reason, we urge major technology companies not to become accomplices, through action or inaction, to authoritarian strategies. We invite them to engage in dialogue on a fair, universal framework that reconciles technological development with the survival of the information ecosystem, as set out in Articles 15, 16, and 17 of the Salta II Declaration.
Just days ago, at a seminar at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, we put it plainly:
We are not asking for subsidies or special favors. We are demanding justice. We insist that our rights and journalistic work be respected. And we demand respect for the public's right to receive truthful information, untainted by falsehoods generated and distributed by concentrated groups of power.
That is the spirit that will guide our administration.
We can summarize our priorities in four Rs:
Reclaim, redouble, reinforce, and rebalance.
These four priorities are part of the Strategic Plan launched in 2018 and updated by the Executive Committee a year ago, with 2030 in view.
In recent months, we have moved forward with the initial phase of our efforts to expand the IAPA's reach and representativeness, deepen partnerships, and broaden our diversity.
We need to regain members in countries where we have lost our presence, strengthen our reach across the continent, and make our defense of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, journalist safety, the fight against impunity, and access to public information heard more forcefully in international forums.
We also need our calls on major platforms to be backed by a public that understands that journalism is one of the pillars of republican life.
With everyone's support, we will continue building an IAPA with a stronger presence throughout the continent, a louder voice, greater participation by young media executives, more women representatives, more digital media outlets, new international partnerships, and a greater capacity to respond to attacks on the press.
To lead our press freedom efforts, I have reappointed Martha Ramos as chair of the relevant committee. She has been doing invaluable work alongside our network of regional vice presidents.
In our efforts to safeguard the viability of our member organizations, we will involve not only the Industry Sustainability Committee, chaired by Jorge Canahuati and Juan Francisco Ealy Lanz-Duret, but also the Legal Committee, led by Martín Etchevers, with César Coll serving as vice chair.
As for training, we will establish a new structure called the Media Lab.
Co-chaired by Ernesto Kraiselburd and Andrés Mompotes, it will bring together our traditional Press Institute and the Editorial Development and Innovation committees.
The Media Lab's goal will be to take an integrated approach to training management, editorial, commercial, and operational teams, with a structure tailored to the transformations we are experiencing and designed to foster experimentation through workshops. It will also support the Executive Director in planning existing events and developing new ones in the future.
To keep these remarks brief, the objectives we have set for the committees and the names of those who will lead them are displayed on the screen. I thank them all for their commitment and dedication.
But beyond those whose names appear here, everyone is invited to join this effort.
I know time and resources are limited, and the urgent demands of day-to-day management often consume our attention.
But if each of us contributes a few hours a month to discussing collective solutions, we will achieve far more together than we ever could by going our separate ways or losing faith in the power of unity.
There are many ways to contribute: joining a committee, providing a contact who can help fund projects, promoting collaboration among companies, editors, and journalists, encouraging more organizations to endorse the Chapultepec and Salta II Declarations, or proposing an innovative idea that will make us more effective, more influential, and more useful to our members and society.
Every contribution matters. Every connection we build makes us stronger. Every initiative we share expands our ability to act.
The challenges are enormous.
The value of unity is even greater.
Because standing together to defend journalism means defending more than our industry.
It means defending democracy, the freedom of our peoples, and the future of generations to come.
Thank you very much.
