MEDIA-NICARAGUA:
Government's Press Policy Comes Under Fire
José Adán Silva

MANAGUA,  (IPS) - The communication strategy of the Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega, which consists of getting information out "directly and uncontaminated" through friendly media outlets, has drawn fire and complaints about possible threats to freedom of speech.

Media outlets and civil society organisations have criticised the government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) as "secretive."

On Feb. 22, the opposition newspaper La Prensa reported on the government's communication strategy, which is based on not providing public information to "rightwing" media outlets and on communicating the government's actions only to outlets that are sympathetic to the leftist FSLN.

On Mar. 26, the government dismissed an official, the day after she gave an interview to the conservative La Prensa newspaper.

The administration's failure to provide an explanation fuelled speculation that her dismissal was the result of her decision to provide information to a paper that is opposed to the government.

Ortega, who governed Nicaragua from 1985 to 1990, began his second term on Jan. 10.

Academics, independent intellectuals, critics on both the left and the right, members of the business community, opposition politicians and even allies of the government say the administration is keeping too tight a grip on information.

The president of the Nicaraguan Press Association, Francisco Rivas, said the government is handling information "just like in war time."

Rivas also told IPS that the government's communication strategy "is a weapon to punish independent media outlets that Señora (Rosario) Murillo does not like." Murillo, Ortega's wife, is the secretary of the governmental Communication and Citizenship Council and the author of the information policy document.

Similar criticism has been voiced by non-governmental organisations like the Movement for Nicaragua, Nicaragua's Women's Network, the Civil Coordinator, the Ethics and Transparency Civic Group, the Nicaraguan Human Rights Centre, and the Permanent Commission for Human Rights.

But Alfonso Malespín, a journalist and professor at the Central American University, said the underlying issue is not respect for the citizens' right to information nor the lack of trust that is generated by excessive control.

In his view, the current government tends to respond to criticism with silence, while seeking to gain time to respond with results.

Malespín said there is no "secretive" policy, just a decision to avoid falling into "verbal battles" against the big media outlets.

"The government believes that talking too much can hurt Ortega's image," said Malespín, who also pointed to the persistence of prejudices shared by many local media against the former insurgent FSLN because of its record of censorship during the 1980s civil war, when Sandinista government troops fought the "contra" fighters financed and armed by the United States.

"Those who say there is silence are simply silencing politics," Ortega responded last weekend, accusing the media of failing to cover the achievements of his administration and of magnifying the negative aspects.

"Some media that are politicised, that are at the service of certain political forces, are practicing censorship," Ortega said in a press conference he gave in his own home.

Murillo denied charges that her communication strategy is aimed at concentrating public information and official advertising only in media outlets that are in line with the government. On the contrary, she said, the government cares about the conditions in which journalists work.

Proof of that, said Murillo, was the signing of an agreement with the journalists association in which the FSLN bloc in parliament promised to donate part of its annual income towards the creation of a social aid fund for the members of the association.

The journalists association has already received the first allotment, of 170,000 dollars. The association's president, Mercedes Rivas, said they were grateful for the assistance, and declined to comment on the government's information policy. "I would rather not discuss that," she said.

Suspicions aroused by the government's communication strategy have been fuelled by the delay in approving the law on access to public information, which has suffered modifications pushed through by legislators of different parties, said Malespín.

Lawmakers from the FSLN and the rightwing Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) sitting on the parliamentary committee for justice and judicial affairs want probity and financial disclosure statements by public officials to be considered reserved documents under the law.

According to Cristiana Chamorro, a journalist and director of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, which was the main sponsor of the "sunshine" law, some legislators are trying to distort the spirit of the bill "to protect themselves from possible criminal charges in the future."

"For this government, freedom of speech is like holding the cross up to the devil," said Chamorro, daughter of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1996) and journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, who was killed in 1978 by the Somoza dictatorship, which was overthrown by the Sandinista guerrillas in 1979.

Chamorro said she was concerned that legislators, both Sandinistas and members of opposition parties, have been postponing debate on the law for over three years.

Against that backdrop, a meeting had been called in Managua Tuesday by the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), which represents newspaper owners in Latin America, to which academics, legislators, lawyers, reporters and media owners were invited to discuss several bills and laws that allegedly undermine freedom of the press.

But the meeting was cancelled and rescheduled for mid-May, the IAPA reported.

The draft law on access to public information was to be one of the key focuses of the meeting, as was a presentation on "little-known dangers to freedom of the press" by the director of La Prensa, Jaime Chamorro, vice president for Nicaragua of IAPA's commission on freedom of the press and information.

In a report on freedom of speech in Latin America, the IAPA warns that "Uncertainty and hard times are looming for press freedom with the new administration of President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo. A document drafted by the first lady about the government's press policy says: 'We will use our media outlets so that our information gets out uncontaminated, directly, as we did during the campaign.'"

The report, which is available on the IAPA web site, mentions criticism of the Ortega administration's information policy from the media, journalists and civil society organisations in Nicaragua.

It also states that "President Ortega promised at a meeting with the Association of Independent Media Outlets in November 2006 'unrestricted respect for freedom of information.' He apologised for 'the censorship that was required by a situation of conflict and that led to excesses'..in the 1980s, and said that 'in the past, government advertising was distributed in a biased way for political reasons and that should be avoided.'"