03 March 2015

Legal restrictions to control the use of the Internet to be discussed at IAPA’s Panama meeting

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MIAMI, Florida (March 3, 2015)—Control by governments of the Internet and the use of legal mechanisms to restrict press freedom will be two issues to be looked into by panel discussions that the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has organized within the framework of its Midyear Meeting, to be held in Panama City, Panama, March 6-9.
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MIAMI, Florida (March 3, 2015)—Control by governments of the Internet and the use of legal mechanisms to restrict press freedom will be two issues to be looked into by panel discussions that the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has organized within the framework of its Midyear Meeting, to be held in Panama City, Panama, March 6-9.

As part of the half-yearly, country-by-country review of the state of freedom of the press during the Saturday, March 7 session, which is open to the public, the IAPA has scheduled a panel discussion where cases of how some governments use the Internet to control and spy on members of the public and opponents will be presented.

The session will be chaired by University of Minnesota Media Ethics and Law professor Jane Kirtley, and by the executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Joel Simon. Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, will be the moderator.

That same day there will be a roundtable discussion on the application by some countries in the Western Hemisphere of regulations that restrict the fundamental right to freedom of expression and of the press. Those taking part will provide details of the governments’ arguments explaining the legal restrictions and their effects on democracy.

The regional vice chairmen of the IAPA Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information for Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela will speak on this issue from their own experiences in news media in their countries. Journalist Adrián Ventura, of the Buenos Aires, Argentina, newspaper La Nación, will head the panel discussion.

The IAPA will continue on Sunday, March 8 and Monday, March 9, its review of the most relevant issues in the last six months regarding press freedom. The half-yearly meeting to be held at Panama City’s Hilton Hotel will bring together hundreds of newspaper executives, publishers, editors and reporters from throughout the region.

There will also be a series of technical seminars on matters of interest to the press and the news media.

To access the full meeting program please go to http://www.sipiapa.org/asambleas/panama-2015.

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.

            

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