10/03/06

Newspaper organization: Press freedom losing ground in Western hemisphere

By ELOY O. AGUILAR
Associated Press Writer

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Freedom of the press lost ground in the Western hemisphere in the last six months because of legal restrictions and open threats by governments, impunity for wrongdoers and the violence of organized crime, especially drug traffickers, the Inter American Press Association concluded Tuesday.

Nine journalists were killed in the last six months -- 53 since the newspaper organization began tracking such murders in 1982 -- including three from Venezuela, three from Colombia, two from Mexico and one from Paraguay. Particularly worrisome is northern Mexico, where drug traffickers operate freely, the group said.

"Along the border with the United States, journalists are gagged and threatened," the group said. "Drug traffickers have corrupted local, state and federal police, mayors, judges, teachers and priests, taxi drivers and hotel employees as well as journalists."

In northern Mexico a group of newspapers has resorted to self-imposed censorship avoiding reference to drug cartel activities to protect their own journalists. Others have joined efforts to publish simultaneously investigative reports on drug trafficking.

IAPA called for professional unity and asked "civil societies of the continent to join the struggle to defend press freedom in our countries."

The group said that in several countries with legitimately elected governments -- including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras and Uruguay -- high-level government officials have begun to single out media outlets and journalists as "nuisances" and encourage lower-level authorities to discredit them.

It also noted that the U.S. government has detained Iraq-based Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and other journalists for long periods without charges, and said that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has leveled undue criticism against media organizations that reveal "sensitive" information about the war on terror.

The most dangerous countries in the region to practice journalism are Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico, according to the report, citing the imprisonment of 26 journalists in Cuba, for example.

Forty-five journalists in Colombia and 20 in Brazil received death threats in the last six months. Also in Brazil, two newspapers were raided by police, one was burned and another confiscated.

Death threats were also made to five Guatemalan journalists, four Paraguayans, two Argentines and one Uruguayan; the offices of two Ecuadorean newspapers and one Paraguayan newspaper were shot at and courts in Costa Rica and Uruguay adopted decisions contrary to press freedom, the group said.