Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009americas: nicaraguawas a political mystery and his health a state secret, although reports widely speculatedthat the president had lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. The Sandinistaleader had not given a press conference since he took office in early 2007.First Lady Rosario Murillo, a virtual prime minister who manages all ofthe government’s communications, exerted strict control over Ortega’s agenda.Officials in the executive branch were allowed to talk to the press only with herpermission. Except for contact with a few pro-government outlets controlled bythe president’s family or the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party,the Nicaraguan leader kept himself out of the public eye. Officials said that hisisolation from public scrutiny sought to ensure that the administration’s viewsreached the public “uncontaminated” by critical media.The government was not interested in communicating with the Nicaraguanpeople through the media, Human Rights Ombudsman Omar Cabezas told CPJduring a visit in April. “We establish our own agenda: We talk when we want, tosay what we want,” said Nicaragua’s top human rights official.CPJ documented the president’s aggressive stance toward the press in a Julyspecial report. In the report, “Daniel Ortega’s Media War,” CPJ urged the administrationto ensure that the media receive equitable access and treatment; that ithalt legal harassment and smear efforts; and that it end the use of inflammatoryanti-press language. Ortega’s animosity toward the press, CPJ found, was drivenby decades-old resentment with roots in the first Sandinista government.Supporters of Ortega took issue with CPJ’s findings. Roberto Larios Meléndez,president of the Union of Nicaraguan Journalists, said the report “lookedlike a document written by the [U.S.] State Department in the 1980s,” and calledit part of the “low-intensity war that the Nicaraguan far-right is fighting to oustthe government with the support of international organizations.” Larios’ criticismechoed rhetoric used by Ortega to vilify press critics as either CIA sponsored oroligarchy controlled. Larios did not dispute the factual elements of CPJ’s report.An April report by the Media Observatory at the Center for Media Investigations(CINCO), a nonprofit that promotes media research, also found that theadministration pursued an adversarial media agenda. “Ortega is living a revolutiondéjà vu: Thirty years after the FSLN victory the enemy is still the same,” wrotethe report’s author, Eduardo Marenco. The Sandinista leader himself used similarlanguage in a March interview with Al-Jazeera English, saying that Nicaragua isfighting “a media war, a war of ideas.”The government used the official media apparatus—composed of Channel 4television, Nueva Radio Ya, and the news Web site El 19—to launch character attacksagainst critics in the media, CPJ research showed. In March, for example,Channel 4 aired a series of ads attacking the director of the Managua-based daily ElNuevo Diario, Francisco Chamorro, and its news editor, Danilo Aguirre, as “fas-cists.” The paper’s dismissal of reporter Eloisa Ibarra became pretext for a smearcampaign that included a photo montage linking Chamorro and Aguirre to Naziswastikas. Ibarra said she was fired for union activism; El Nuevo Diario said it wasover her performance.t o p developments»»Ortega administration marginalizesprivate media.»»Authorities use legal harassment,smears against critics.0key statisticNumber of press conferences heldby Ortega since taking office.The most egregious exampleof government intimidationwas aimed at CarlosFernando Chamorro, formereditor of the Sandinista magazineBarricada in the 1980s,who now runs the magazineConfidencial, serves as presidentof CINCO, and hoststhe television news programs“Esta Semana” (This Week)and “Esta Noche” (ThisNight). Chamorro is one of the most critical and best-known journalists in thecountry. It was on “Esta Semana” that Chamorro exposed a multimillion-dollarextortion scheme involving the Sandinista Party and influence peddling in thejudiciary.After the story aired in 2007, Channel 4 and Nueva Radio Ya broadcast unfoundedads connecting Chamorro to international drug trafficking. The governmentintensified its attack in September 2008, launching an inquiry into whetherCINCO and other nonprofits were illegally funneling foreign investments toother civil society groups. CINCO’s Managua offices were raided and Chamorrowas interrogated.In February 2009, after an international outcry, the Attorney General’s officedropped the criminal case against CINCO and the other organizations. Chamorrocredited international attention for the government’s decision to drop the matter.“Thanks to this wave of national and international solidarity, this case set aprecedent: When citizens are right and express the truth, especially when theyare driven to resist and not to be intimidated, sooner or later the government willhave to take a step back,” he wrote in Confidencial.Private media executives complained about a biased system of distributinggovernment advertising that effectively punished critical outlets while rewardingsupportive press. The Sandinista government spent 80 percent of its US$3.5million advertising budget in 2007-08 for spots on Channel 4, which is runby Ortega’s sons, according to Confidencial. Administration officials said theywere following practices established by their predecessors. Preceding governments,for example, had boycotted Sandinista media, human rights ombudsman9 29 3