Miami (April 8, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today voiced concern at the conviction by an El Salvador court of the newspaper La Prensa Gráfica for publishing the identity of a minor who committed a murder on a public street; in this case the organization supports the paper’s executives’ argument that the public’s right to information is above that of a minor’s privacy.
In her April 6 ruling Judge María Isabel Ponce Gallardo of San Salvador’s 2nd Juvenile Court ordered the newspaper’s executive editor, José Roberto Dutriz, to pay a fine equivalent to 50 days’ minimum wage on the grounds that La Prensa Gráfica had violated Article 5 of the Juvenile Criminal Law and Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child regarding the protection of’ a minor’s privacy.
The case arose from the publication of a series of photographs – taken by a La Prensa Grafica photographer on March 11 and published over the following days in the paper and other local media – showing a 17-year-old student at the precise moment he was attacking another youth in a mid afternoon fight on a public street. The victim died from his wounds in the hospital hours later.
After she had notified the paper not to publish any more details, which the paper complied with, in the audience brought by the judge Dutriz and editor Gabriel Trillos testified that after hours’ consideration whether to adhere to the law or publish, they decided that in this particular case the prevailing factor was that the editorial principle of the people’s right to know and defense of press freedom were above the legally stipulated right for the protection of minors and children. They added that they protected the victim’s identity by not publishing his photo, but they did decide to show and identify his attacker.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, declared, “We face very sensitive cases in media newsrooms every day, cases in which there has to be a careful weighing of two values that are not absolute, as are the freedom to inform and the protection of a person’s reputation; these are questions where balance and editorial criteria are weighed against what the law demands, what is the standard in journalistic ethics, and what defines freedom of the press or the public’s right to know.”
Aguirre added that it is within the public debate arising from “these ‘gray areas’, that society comes out ahead, with understanding; where legislators realize that laws should be reviewed and judges create new case law so that in the end a broader benefit, that of the common good, prevails.”
Aguirre and Robert Rivard, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, said they look forward to the case opening a rich debate during the appeals process, which Dutriz said would go forward. They expressed solidarity with the newspaper and support for the editorial stance it decided upon.
The IAPA officers also noted that in many legal proceedings today judges lean towards different interpretations when the minors concerned have committed serious crimes or when they are ruling on laws that have become outdated, especially now that minors are increasingly involved in serious crimes.
Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, recalled that during the IAPA’s Midyear Meeting in Aruba early last month a resolution was adopted that in addressing the judiciary in El Salvador said “while we respect judicial independence and due process, the El Salvador justice system must take into account the defense of the people’s right to know in this criminal case.”
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org