Attacks on the Press 2006: Americas Analysis
Leftists Lean on the Latin American MediaBy Carlos Lauría Latin America’s new leftist leaders may try to portray themselves as good news for the press, using the rhetoric of liberal democracy. But political and media analysts say these recently installed left-wing administrations are deeply rooted in the region’s longstanding culture of authoritarianism.
Two journalists killed
New York, February 17, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists today called for investigations into two incidents in which journalists have been shot dead in Ecuador this week. In both cases it is unclear whether the journalists were killed for their work. On Monday, radio reporter José Luis Léon Desiderio was killed in the coastal…
Photographer dies while covering protests
New York, April 21, 2005 Photographer Julio Augusto García Romero died Tuesday evening, after inhaling tear gas while covering a demonstration in downtown Quito, Ecuador’s capital. The demonstration, organized to protest the now-ousted President Lucio Gutiérrez, was moving toward the Palacio de Carondelet, the seat of the executive branch, when police fired water cannons…
Attacks on the Press 2004: Ecuador
Ecuador Lucio Gutiérrez, who was elected president in 2002 on an anticorruption platform, repeatedly lashed out at the press in 2004 over allegations of nepotism and campaign finance irregularities. The president and government officials regularly accused the media of “spreading half-truths.” Given the government’s hostility, journalists fear that a new access to information law may…
Supreme Court upholds sentence against journalist
New York, November 11, 2004—Ecuador’s Supreme Court of Justice upheld the conviction of columnist Rodrigo Fierro Benítez on criminal defamation charges, the Committee to Protect Journalists has learned. The Supreme Court then suspended Fierro’s sentence. On October 29, a three-judge Supreme Court panel upheld the one-month prison sentence against Fierro, a columnist for the Quito-based…
