A journalist in Chile may face daily challenges of government censorship, limited access to public records, tight privacy restrictions or even the threat of being jailed or killed for his work, said Felipe Edwards, one of a panel of Latin American journalists Wednesday at the McCormick Tribune Center.
Four panelists spoke to a crowd of about 40 people about the setbacks they encounter when fighting for a freedom of press that may be taken for granted in the United States.
Alejo Miro Quesada, director of the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, is a leader of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Quesada said the government, tainted by bribes and corruption, closely censors what is printed.
“Many citizens and politicians think that the press must be controlled by laws,” Quesada said. “As journalists, we are based in the belief that citizens must control us.”
Edwards, the editor of one of Chile’s leading papers, El Mercurio, detailed strict legal restrictions and cultural aspects that create difficulties for journalists in Latin America. The Chilean government holds the right to restrict access to any government documents relating to fiscal policy, foreign affairs or the protection of private interests.
“There you have it,” Edwards said. “We have laws saying we can have access to government documents — with a few exceptions.”
Ricardo Trotti, director of the Inter-American Press Association, condemned violence against the media. In Brazil and Colombia in the last six months, four journalists were killed, two were kidnapped and sixteen were exiled, he said.
“In the United States, there is violence against journalists as well, but 80 percent of the crimes were solved,” he said. “The problem of Latin American countries is the lack of an effective judicial system.”
In contrast Trotti said the Cuban government doesn’t kill journalists. “They don’t need to kill them because they’re all in jail,” he said.
The fourth panel member, Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, a journalist from Nicaragua, said her family gave all they had for freedom of expression for their newspaper, La Prensa.
“I wholeheartedly agree with the words of Thomas Jefferson: ‘A society with free press and without government is better than a society without free press and with government,'” she said.
Sophie De Geest, a Weinberg senior, said she didn’t know anything about politics in Latin America before the lecture.
“I didn’t realize the extent of the difference in freedom of speech and the struggles they went though,” she said. “Their aspirations are the same, but their restrictions are much greater than here.”
