Censored! The Guatemalan newspaper 21st century...
…renamed itself 14th century. |
Buoyed
by the spread of democracy, Latin America’s press is fast gaining in influence, boldness
and credibility, says journalism professor Mario Diament1.
The technology revolution stands to make the process irreversible
Latin
America has been through quite a few profound political transitions over the past
two decades. What part has the press played in this process? Is there a kind of regional
model that defines its relationship with political power?
You can’t really talk about a “regional model,” but of similar experiences. According
to conventional wisdom, the more democracy you have, the more press freedom there
is, but this still varies from one country to the next. In the past, a sizeable part
of the Latin American press had close ties to political and economic interests through
its owners. Those interests routinely took precedence over journalistic impartiality.
But during the 1970s, journalists became very politicized. Many became subversive
and partisan writers, distorting the role of the press and badly undermining its
credibility. However in the 1980s, as democracy spread across the region and a new
generation of journalists less marked by past events came to the fore, a very refreshing
and positive change took place.
Can you give a few examples?
Mexico and Guatemala are two of the most interesting cases. The Chiapas uprising
in Mexico had the effect of cutting short press allegiance to the ruling party, the
PRI, which went hand-in-hand with rampant corruption. Chiapas came on so suddenly
that the government of President Carlos Salinas didn’t have time to put together
a media strategy to deal with the situation. As a result, part of the Mexican press
began reporting very openly on events. I think it’s safe to say that to a large extent,
this new attitude on the part of the press sounded the death knell of one-party domination
and opened the way for Vicente Fox’s victory in the presidential elections in 2000.
In Guatemala, during the short-lived seizure of full powers by President Jorge Serrano
on May 25,1993, censorship was imposed and the press defied the government for the
first time. The newspaper Siglo Veintiuno (21st Century) renamed itself Siglo Catorce
(14th Century) and ran black columns in the place of censored material, exposing
the government’s attempt to stop the press from reporting on events. Colombia should
also be mentioned: many journalists have and continue to risk their lives there reporting
amid threats from guerrilla forces, paramilitary groups and drug-lords.
In the past, the Latin American press has often been submissive and engaged in
self-censorship, sometimes to the point of complicity with the powers in place. Why
has this changed?
In my eyes, the two most important factors are the return to democracy and the revolution
in technology. The South American dictatorships of the 1970s created a spineless
and obliging press, but as these regimes began to crumble, the media became more
independent. With the return to democracy, journalists became even more daring and
inquisitive.
In some places, such as Argentina, the press’ credibility and influence grew as political
parties became discredited. During the 1989-99 rule of President Carlos Menem, the
Argentine press published a remarkable series of investigations into corruption and
money-laundering that shook the government. At one point, opinion polls showed that
the public trusted the press more than any other institution in the country, including
the Catholic Church.
The revolution in technology, which began with photocopies and faxes and moved onto
satellite TV and the Internet, has diversified information sources to the point that
nobody can seriously hope to impose any kind of control. The relative cheapness of
the technology has made the spread of information more democratic than ever before.
1.
An Argentine journalist and playwright living in Miami, where he is professor of
journalism at Florida International University. |
