Miami (October 5, 2009)–The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today issued an open call to the state government of Guanajuato, Mexico, to accept the recommendations of that country’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) that it establish technical criteria for the placement of official advertising and not to use public resources to reward or punish news media.
The CNDH recommendations, announced on September 29, back up a 2008 report by the Guanajuato Public Prosecutors’ Office for Human Rights which criticized the administration of Governor Manuel Oliva Ramírez for having withdrawn official advertising from the newspapers a.m. and Al Día. Placement of the state government’s announcements in the two newspapers had been on the decrease since June 2007 following publication of critical news reports concerning wrongdoing in the public administration.
The CNDH statement, which is not binding, declares that “the lack of clear, objective, transparent and non-discriminatory procedures and criteria on the part of the departments and agencies of the government of Guanajuato state for the placement of official advertising leaves open the possibility of incurring in discretionary practices for the assignment of public resources with the objective of rewarding or punishing the media according to their editorial stance.”
IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón said that it would be “an excellent message concerning freedom of the press if the government of Guanajuato were to accept the recommendations and that, moreover, they be taken as an example throughout the country so that they become the norm, technical and objective criteria for the placement of official advertising being applied.”
Santos Calderón, editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, recalled that the IAPA had earlier expressed its condemnation of the Guanajuato state government for discriminating against news media in reprisal for their editorial stance and contravening the standards set out in the Declaration of Chapultepec and other international documents.
For his part, the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, citing resolutions issued by the organization, declared that “showing partiality in the handling of public funds is corruption” and that such a practice “must be ended immediately and all the media and journalists must be treated equally and without discrimination.”
