Reprisal against journalist in Uruguay assailed by IAPA
MIAMI, Florida (May 14, 2008)The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today protested the decision by a Uruguayan bank to withdraw official advertising from the weekly newspaper Búsqueda in apparent retaliation for its exposure of credit fraud.
On April 17 the Montevideo-based publication published a report on the procedure adopted by state-owned Banco de la República Oriental del Uruguay (BROU) to cancel the debt on a loan to Uruguays Vice President Rodolfo Nin Novoa just two months after he took office in 2005.
Despite threats to the publications reporters, in the following weeks edition Búsqueda also published an interview with the banks president, Fernando Callola. On May 2 the bank management informed Búsqueda that it was canceling an ad placement made on April 11.
IAPA President Earl Maucker, editor and senior vice president of the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, newspaper Sun-Sentinel, declared, The withdrawal of official advertising from a news outlet in revenge for its editorial policy, criticism or exposure amounts to a discriminatory action which the IAPA has always regarded as corrupt since public funds are being used as if they were private. He added that it was hoped that this attitude changes.
The chairman of the IAPAs Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, regretted that placement of official advertising was continuing to be used in Uruguay as a means of punishing or rewarding news media. Marroquín, editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Prensa Libre, noted that his organization had been receiving complaints on this matter almost every day in recent years, which has forced the IAPA to censure successive Uruguayan administrations from different political parties.
The IAPA attaches special importance to this issue which is referred to in the Declaration of Chapultepecs Article 7. In March the organization acknowledged progress in Argentina following a ruling by that countrys Supreme Court last September that prohibits the Neuquén provincial government from discriminating against news media by arbitrarily withdrawing or reducing official advertising. As a result of this decision the Tierra del Fuego provincial government issued a decree regulating the distribution of official advertising in that southern Argentine province.