IN A WATERSHED YEAR FOR MEXICAN DEMOCRACY, the dissolution of ties between much of the media and the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) helped foster a more professional and competitive press in 2000. The election of National Action Party (PAN) candidate Vicente Fox to the presidency on July 2 ended the PRI’s 71-year hold on…
MEDIA REPORTS ON OFFICIAL CORRUPTION RAISED TENSIONS between the press and the Nicaraguan government, which claimed that the media was engaged in a conspiracy to tarnish its achievements. In March, newspapers reported that Director of General Revenues Byron Jerez, the chief tax collector, had allegedly written almost half a million dollars in checks for fraudulent…
THE PANAMANIAN GOVERNMENT NOT ONLY FAILED TO LIVE UP TO its promise to repeal the country’s so-called gag laws, but also made several attempts to impose new restrictions in 2000. Meanwhile, several journalists were handed jail sentences for defamation. The gag laws consist of a range of articles, laws, and decrees-many promulgated under military governments-that…
A COUP ATTEMPT IN MAY (THE THIRD SUCH ATTEMPT SINCE 1996) and vice-presidential elections in August tested the Paraguayan media and caused increased political polarizarion. On May 18, rebel forces loyal to Gen. Lino Oviedo, the fugitive leader of a faction within the ruling Colorado Party, tried to take over army barracks in the capital…
PERU’S INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS HELPED drive President Alberto K. Fujimori from power after forcing his once-mighty intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos into exile. Fujimori’s November departure led to the unshackling of the independent press, which had seriously suffered under a regime that tried to manipulate public information for a decade. President Fujimori used all resources at his…
PRIME MINISTER BASDEO PANDAY, WHO HAS SPENT MUCH of his five years in office feuding with the media, found his government embroiled in a constitutional crisis at year’s end, after winning a narrow victory in elections held on December 11. The population of this oil- and gas-rich country is equally divided between people of African…
SINCE ITS FOUNDING IN 1981, CPJ HAS, AS A MATTER OF STRATEGY and policy, concentrated on press freedom violations and attacks on journalists outside the United States. CPJ aims to concentrate its efforts on those countries where journalists are most in need of international support and protection. As a result, we do not systematically monitor…
URUGUAY IS HOME TO ONE OF THE MOST VIBRANT MEDIA SCENES in the Americas, but public officials frequently pursue criminal defamation cases against journalists, while state advertising is distributed to reward media that provide favorable coverage of the government. Uruguayan journalists say that criminal defamation cases have become commonplace in the last decade. Under Article…
THE ANTAGONISTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MEDIA and President Hugo Chávez Frías, coupled with some alarming legal developments, prompted CPJ Americas program coordinator Marylene Smeets to visit Venezuela in October to investigate the situation. Read her special report on Venezuela. The report concludes that the president’s verbal fusillades seem to have given the population and authorities…
EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…