IAPA against press discrimination in El Salvador

MIAMI, Florida (March 12, 2015)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today criticized the chief justice of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in El Salvador for prohibiting access to a press conference, calling it a clear discrimination of journalists based on the editorial stance of the news media they represent. Tribunal Chief Justice Julio Olivio called a press conference earlier this week to which he denied entry to journalists from several local and international media critical of that body. The Tribunal has been accused of alleged wrongdoing in the counting of votes in legislative and municipal elections held on March 1. The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, declared that this was “a case of clear discrimination hindering the work of the press, but, worse than that, it violates the public’s right to information through a tribunal that should comply with the Constitution, where that right is supposedly enshrined.” For his part the committee’s regional vice chairman for El Salvador, Fabricio Altamirano, editor of the newspaper El Diario de Hoy, said, “This action, besides discriminating, violates journalists’ right to obtain information from a public official.” Paolillo and Altamirano said that the El Salvador authorities should take into account that they are committed to national and international principles that protect access to information and freedom of the press – also enshrined in laws in force in El Salvador, as well as in the Declaration of Chapultepec and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights’ Declaration on Freedom of Expression, which “are binding on governments.” 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.