QUITO, Ecuador (July 19, 2011)—The president of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Gonzalo Marroquín, called on the citizens of Ecuador to take part in the defense of freedom of expression and the press due to “the deterioration that these fundamental human rights have suffered in recent years” as a result of the restrictive legal system.
At a press conference yesterday, at the end of a two-day IAPA mission in Quito, Marroquín, president of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Siglo 21, said, “The climate of accelerated deterioration” will be further intensified with the passage of a future Communication Law, a bill that he described as “disastrous and a gag” that would “serve to expand self-censorship far beyond the realm of the press and its work.”
Marroquín and the other members of the IAPA delegation expressed concern at “the increasing concentration” of media in government hands, the ongoing harassment of the Ecuador’s independent press through excessive and disproportionate legal suits by President Rafael Correa, and the manipulated placement of official advertising to punish or reward media depending on their editorial stance, among other issues.
“We are not in favor of any law being passed to regulate the press, but in view of the constitutional mandate and the referendum that the legislative branch of government should approve,” Marroquín said, “we believe that the only correct and constitutional course is for Ecuador to respect international treaties on human rights it is signatory to, so that freedom is not restricted; rather it is guaranteed.”
Robert Rivard, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, added, “In our experience in every country where press laws have been adopted, they have only served to restrict the work of journalists and the public’s right to information.” He added that governments “do not have a right and cannot, must not, govern the press, because that goes against democracy.”
Former IAPA President Edward Seaton, of Seaton Newspapers, Kansas, said “what is surprising and new is that this type of legislation as proposed will enable the government, through a supranational agency, to apply it not only against electronic media such as radio and television but also against the print press, the Internet and social media, which makes it unique among the democratic countries of the world, or at least in the Americas.”
Claudio Paolillo, co chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the Uruguayan weekly news magazine Búsqueda, views the new law as being “conceived under a restrictive legal framework that had its start with the 2007 Constitution, continued with this year’s referendum and has emerged in the new bill for a Communication Law, which is nothing more than an anti-press law.”
The IAPA’s visit to Quito was not without incident. The delegation was not received by President Correa or officials of the executive branch as had been promised by the president’s office. In addition, the Standing Specialized Communication Committee, chaired by Congressman Mauro Andino of the governing Alianza País party, cancelled its meeting at the last moment after changing the scheduled time, after the changes had been accepted by the IAPA which had to cancel other meetings as a result.
The IAPA mission said that there are several clauses in the future law that will restrict press freedom because they are based on a Constitutional clause that the organization had predicted would have serious consequences by establishing that “information must be accurate, verified, timely, in context and plural.”
The IAPA criticized the fact that it will fall principally to the government, through the creation of a 7-member Council on Communication and Information -- heavily weighted with members of the executive branch --, to oversee and punish those media that fail to observe guidelines on violence and information that might be considered discriminatory -- concepts that are vaguely worded in the bill.
The future law requires media to have codes of ethics, and invests in the government the power to define criteria concerning professional issues; it restores obligatory membership in a journalists union, something that had been declared unconstitutional in Ecuador; and it regulates matters regarding the right of reply, ethics issues and cases that are normally brought before lower courts of law. It also establishes that the media must separate information from opinion, something which negates editorial stances and media independence.
IAPA officers fear that these legal restrictions and all the other elements that hinder freedom of expression will intensify the self-censorship which already exists beyond normal journalistic limits. They recalled that during a previous visit, in October 2009, it had already been warned that the Communication Law would “generate self-censorship and limit investigative reporting and the exposure of corruption, violating the role of the press in a democracy.”
The IAPA representatives met with Constitutional Court Chief Justice Patricio Pazmiño Freire; Ombudsman Fernando Gutiérrez Vera and officials of his office; with federal lawmakers belonging to the Specialized Committee, among them César Montúfar, Paco Moncayo and Jimmy Pinoagorte; reporters, editors and publishers, and representatives of non-governmental organizations, press groups, chambers of commerce and academia.
Taking part in the IAPA delegation along with Marroquín, Rivard and Paolillo were Executive Director Julio E. Muñoz and Press Freedom Director Ricardo Trotti.
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.
