President Rafael Correa. Reuters
On August 16, Ecuador police commander General Wilson Alulema announced that the nation’s 42,000 police officers will each take lie detector tests. The rule stems from the September 30, 2010 incident when large numbers of police verbally and physically abused President Rafael Correa, culminating in the army’s rescue of the President from a hospital where the police had surrounded him. Given the breakdown in management of intrastate security services, it is clear why President Correa has tried to stamp out any negative press coverage of the incident. President Correa is much maligned by journalists and commentators for his ill treatment of the media. However, do these same analysts simultaneously call for high journalistic standards from those who publicly criticize Correa?
Correa has a tense relationship with the press community. In July, an Ecuadorean court sided with President Correa in a defamation lawsuit brought against the El Universo newspaper of Guayaquil. Op-ed writer Emilio Palacio, in the column “No a las mentiras” (“No to lies”), had accused Correa of ordering the military to fire on a hospital filled with innocent patients. The penalty: three years in jail for Palacio and brothers Carlos, Cesar, and Nicolas Perez, owners of the paper. The four men were also fined $30 million, and the newspaper $10 million, an effort designed to bankrupt the business.
Since Correa took office in January 2007, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has issued 20 press releases on policies hostile to freedom of speech. 8 of these have come since Palacio’s February editorial. Similarly, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported no fewer than 43 instances of concern since 2007, and 14 since the editorial. IAPA President Gonzalo Marroquín recently told a gathering of civil society representatives in Ecuador that “it was clear that freedom of the press and independence of the public institutions, access to independent and equitable justice…are principles that are undergoing great deterioration in the country, due to attitudes and direct actions adopted by the nation’s president.”
The commentary critical of Correa also bears examination. “No a las mentiras” is an editorial infused with hatred; a diatribe by Palacio that offers insults with no concrete evidence. Palacio refers to Correa never by name, only as “el Dictador” (no need for translation here), and provocatively introduces El Dictador as “devoto cristiano, hombre de paz” (“devoted Christian and peaceful man”). It is fair to criticize Correa for the latter’s handling of the September 30 violence regardless of the President’s direct orders, as about 8 died and 280 were hurt in Quito (source: Dow Jones). However, evidence is vague – Palacio accuses the army of confiscating spent rounds after its rescue of Correa – and he ends by stating “Los crimenes de lesa humanidad, que no lo olvide, no prescriben” (“Crimes against humanity cannot be forgotten or prescribed”).
The concluding statement is as it says – an accusation of human rights violations by a sitting Head of State. I would expect that IAPA and other respected journalists would require concrete evidence to support such an accusation. Furthermore, the fact that “No a las mentiras” is biased against Correa from the start questions the credibility of the author.
In excoriating the ruling against Palacio, the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady berates President Obama for not taking a harsh line against Correa, calling it evidence of Obama’s “collectivist instincts” (source: “Obama Gives Ecuador’s Caudillo A Pass,” Wall Street Journal, 8/26/2011). O’Grady further casts Obama as an extreme leftist by contrasting his harsh crackdown against the de-facto Honduran government that deposed President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 with Obama’s current treatment of Correa. I am a dedicated reader of O’Grady’s, and she never fails to find evil in any left-of-center politician. I would support President Obama if he publicly defended freedom of the press in Ecuador, but if Obama does not, does that mean he is a left-wing autocrat? The CPJ has chronicled many threats to freedom of the press in Colombia, a US ally with a right-wing government. By O’Grady’s logic, Obama’s refusal to speak out against Colombian leaders would make him a right wing autocrat. The truth is the US President cannot react to every such event. Most likely O’Grady is using one issue in Ecuador as an excuse to criticize Obama.
It is admirable that Palacio directly challenges Correa, and he and O’Grady should always have the right to publish their words. However, evidence and objective criticism should replace innuendo. If readers see these journalists as biased before reading articles, the articles will mean nothing. When Americans see an article by Karl Rove, they know that the article will defame liberals as unpatriotic and backward, regardless of real-world evidence. It is not necessary to read the article.
