Within the framework of World Press Freedom Day, on May 2, 3 and 4, the State of Chile and UNESCO will host their thirty-first Conference, an edition that will be dedicated to journalism and freedom of expression in the current context. of environmental crisis, under the name “Press for the planet: Journalism in the face of the environmental crisis.”
However, there are not very positive issues that are repeated and that underlie the function and exercise of the profession and that, in the opinion of several entities specialized in the area, in our country have not been corrected and have even worsened.
To talk about these topics, we interviewed Javier García, lawyer by profession and president of the Observatory of the Right to Communication, a non-profit NGO dedicated to the promotion and defense of freedom of expression and pluralism with special attention to the protection of rights of journalists, social communicators and audiences.
In the opinion of the professional, Chile presents a panorama with chiaroscuros. “With respect to other countries in the region, we show a lesser deterioration in the situation of freedom of expression, but this deterioration exists and there are structural deficiencies that have not been resolved in recent decades, and even since the return to democracy.” ; For example, just the previous week a journalist was convicted of a crime of disorder while he was covering a demonstration – which he had not committed – a sentence that is part of constant judicial harassment against journalists from small and independent media that cover matters of interest. public. And another problem, which is already structural and has intensified in recent years, has been police violence against the press, especially against photographers and reporters covering the marches. So, in that sense, the trends are very similar to other countries and with the fact that .Chile has, unfortunately, become part of the list of countries with journalists murdered with the death of Francisca Sandoval, two years ago. For all these reasons, Javier García points out, “this is not a day of celebration, but rather it should be a day to note the deficiencies and see how we remedy them.”
Chile has, unfortunately, become part of the list of countries with journalists murdered with the death of Francisca Sandoval, two years ago” (photograph of the Rose Garden of Villa Grimaldi.
However, it should be noted that there is a business press that is not bothered by this format under which the system works.
Of course, depending on the social sector, concerns vary regarding freedom of expression; For example, there are sectors that genuinely think or have installed the idea that in Chile there are no press freedom problems and this denialism is very worrying because in the end it makes invisible situations that should be resolved. We see from the Observatory that problems arise in all areas and that the most serious are violence against the press, including cases of espionage by the State. And if we look at how the media sector is distributed, what we find are many problems of concentration, little pluralism and the fact that the elites are overrepresented.
We must also add – Javier García points out – the precariousness of local or community media and the absence of media in native languages, which is a key issue for the preservation of a language; So there are a series of problems that if you don’t make them visible and don’t do an analysis or diagnosis, not only are you not going to solve them, but they are going to get deeper.
The issue of media concentration is a problem in Chile since the beginning of the return of democracy where the economic factor weighs. Why hasn’t it been possible to legislate in some way, allowing the existence of smaller media or with some subsidy, without it being seen as an intervention in the market?
Look, I believe that there have been several factors and different motivations on the part of the large media that were consolidated during the dictatorship and that have not wanted to lose that situation; They have put pressure on new actors not to enter. For example, we have several cases of media expropriated during the dictatorship that, after the return of democracy, were not returned to their legitimate owners. At this moment there is a case in the Inter-American Court in which we are going to have a sentence, possibly condemning, for the State of Chile for the case of the expropriation of Radio La Voz del Sur during the 1973 coup and the responsibility of the State of Chile for the lack of access to an effective judicial remedy for reparation for the confiscation of the station.
So between the pressures of powerful groups and this lack of commitment to communication through media driven by citizens, in the end what we have is a concentrated and poor ecosystem, weakened with information deserts and with media that can hardly come out forward and that on many occasions they are harassed and criminalized.
To this situation we must add that political power during the transition also did not empower media outlets that overweight business groups that are and maintain a privileged situation in the management of the media, perpetuating this inequality. For example, community radio stations had a very important struggle in the 90s to open the spectrum so that they could have a place on the dial; However, interest groups pressured for this citizen demand to be ‘deactivated’ and a bad law was enacted that essentially marginalized community networks from required coverage. Clearly there was a lot of commercial and political pressure, since media companies do not want economic competition or to have their audience taken away. And this distrust of expanding communication spaces has also affected center-left political parties and coalitions, because these media have been promoted by independent groups that do not obey any central control.
So between the pressures of powerful groups and this lack of commitment to communication through media driven by citizens, in the end what we have is a concentrated and poor ecosystem, weakened with information deserts and with media that can hardly come out forward and that on many occasions they are harassed and criminalized.
Finally Javier, how does this affect the rights of people in communication, good information and their training as citizens?
Look, always when we talk about democratic societies, when we talk about human rights, we talk about freedom of expression being a right, it is a cornerstone and a key right that activates other rights. So, if we have problems with freedom of expression, in which some have more rights and others have less, of course it is not good for democracy, because it clearly goes against pluralism. We have a society where there are voices that do not have ‘speakers’; where there are no spaces for dialogue that are inclusive and, on the contrary, an agenda is being generated where some groups are overrepresented in the debates and which are limited to only a series of topics. This is a very serious acceptance of the lack of pluralism, not only of the media, but of public debate, which weakens not only the media ecosystem or a sector or human rights, but ends up being a weakness of the democratic system itself.
Sentence to Daniel Labbé
The decision was made after a judicial process that lasted more than three years: on January 29, 2021, the journalist was arrested by Carabineros while covering a demonstration in the center of Santiago. At that moment he was away from protesters, he was wearing his equipment and a visible press credential.
After spending the night in detention, the journalist was accused by the Prosecutor’s Office – based on the police report – of throwing objects and inciting protesters to block public roads and cause damage, as well as resisting his arrest and beating his followers. captors.
During the trial, the defense, Labbé presented photographs and videos that demonstrated that the accusation was false and that the journalist was at the scene carrying out his informative work. However, the judge sentenced the journalist based on the testimonies of two police officers who stated that they saw him throwing objects before, without specifying the type of objects or the exact place where these events occurred.
According to the Observatory of the Right to Communication, there is hostile treatment by Carabineros officials towards the press that covers citizen protests. Since 2019, a total of 418 attacks by law enforcement forces have been recorded, of which 139 have consisted of arbitrary arrests. During the year that the events occurred (2021), ODC documented 33 arbitrary detentions, although this is the only case that has ended with a sentence of this severity.
