Politics, Business & Culture in the Americas

Violence and Government Regulation Continue to Limit Press Freedom in the Americas, Report Finds



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Only two percent of Latin Americans in 2014 lived in a media environment considered free, according to a press freedom report released Wednesday by the research institute Freedom House. The report registered no collective improvement for press in the Americas from the year prior, when press freedom dropped to its lowest level in five years. Globally, press liberties in 2014 fell to their lowest point in more than a decade.

According to Freedom of the Press 2015, 15 countries in the Western Hemisphere were considered free media environments, 15 were considered partly free and five not free—Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela. Aside from Cuba, those countries and Peru received their worst press freedom score in over a decade, with Ecuador ranking among the five countries globally posting the sharpest five-year declines. The report cites “hostile rhetoric from the government combined with pervasive legal harassment of journalists and media outlets” as contributors to the country’s decline. In 2013, Ecuador’s government passed a controversial media law which heightened state regulation of the media, a move that critics say reduced transparency and press freedom.

In Honduras, pervasive violence and alliances between media owners and the government resulted in a four point drop in the country’s score on the report’s 100-point scale. Journalists in Central America face particularly grave threats to their personal safety. The murder of three Guatemalan journalists in March highlighted the high risk journalists take exposing government corruption.

Cuba was the only country in the Americas to make the report’s list of the ten worst countries or territories for press freedom due to the government’s official censorship of the media and imprisonment of political figures. The country’s release of over 50 political prisoners in early 2015, however, may improve the country’s score in the coming year. 

In North America, the United States’ score fell one point due to police harassment of journalists covering protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in August. Mexico received its lowest score in a decade due to high levels of intimidation and violence toward journalists exposing the country’s organized criminal networks. Additionally, the country’s new telecommunications reform law had a detrimental effect on Internet liberties, the report says.

Read Americas Quarterly’s Fall 2013 issue on press freedom in the Americas here.

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Any opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of Americas Quarterly or its publishers.
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