IAPA objects to Ecuador’s communication law controls

MIAMI, Florida (May 21, 2015)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today described as “a new attack” fines levied by the government of Ecuador on privately-owned and independent media for content that it regarded as counter-productive to the interests of the authorities. The IAPA declared that the government wants to determine what is news and information of public interest and how facts should be published, which it says represents a clear interference and a violation of the editorial freedom that the press must have for a democracy to exist. The newspaper La Hora maintained its constitutional right to resist paying a fine of $3,540 imposed by the Superintendency of Information and Communication (Supercom), the entity enforcing the Communications Organic Law, for not having covered and published declarations by the mayor of Loja on February 23. IAPA President Gustavo Mohme, editor of the Lima, Peru, newspaper La República, declared, “The argument for this fine provides us the rationale for what we have been saying about this law, it being a weapon that the government uses to intervene in content and overrule the editorial criteria of the media.” He added that the Ecuadorean government “once again is showing how it uses regulations to control public discourse.” Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, stated that with this “new attack” the government, through its “state interventionism” of communications “comes to the point of defining what is information of public interest, where and when it should be published, and what is the language that the media should use”, in order to publish the official texts that the government demands. The newspaper El Comercio was ordered by Supercom to publish on its front page a rectification and public apologies to a minister and the general manager of a state-run hydraulic project as a result of a news item published on April 5. The order was the result of a complaint filed by the minister. Additionally, the Communication Ministry of the Presidency (SECOM) was not satisfied with the publication of a reply that the newspaper El Universo was ordered to provide. SECOM has formally complained about the newspaper to Supercom, demanding that there be published headlines and adjectives attacking the media outlet, as they were sent, despite the fact that the legal framework does not determine it in this way. On May 25 there will be the first hearing. 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.