Wes­ley Gib­bings

Austin, Texas-Dur­ing a vis­it to the state of Ve­r­acruz in Mex­i­co, free­lance jour­nal­ist and press free­dom ad­vo­cate, Daniela Pas­trana, re­ceived an un­usu­al re­quest. "I need a gun," a col­league from the vi­o­lence-plagued state asked. "Why would you need a gun?" Pas­trana replied. "I don't think it would be a good idea for you to car­ry a gun." "I don't need a gun to re­spond to any at­tack," the Ve­r­acruz jour­nal­ist re­spond­ed. "I need it be­cause we have de­cid­ed that they won't take us alive."

On­ly days be­fore, the dis­mem­bered corpses of three pho­to­jour­nal­ists had been found. Some­thing had been used to peel the skin from their bod­ies. They were vic­tims in an es­ca­lat­ing war on jour­nal­ists dar­ing to re­port on the coun­try's vi­o­lent drug car­tels and a trade that has claimed close to 50,000 lives in the last six years. Most re­cent­ly, at­ten­tion has turned to jour­nal­ists whose work has ex­posed a thriv­ing net­work of cor­rup­tion, graft and vi­o­lence linked to nar­co-traf­fick­ing. Brazil, Colom­bia and Hon­duras are list­ed along­side Mex­i­co as be­ing the most dan­ger­ous coun­tries for the work of jour­nal­ists in the West­ern Hemi­sphere by press free­dom groups.

Tes­ti­monies of prac­ti­tion­ers such as Pas­trana, Hec­tor Be­cer­ra of Hon­duras, Marce­lo Mor­eira of Brazil and Gin­na More­lo of Colom­bia at the 10th Austin Fo­rum host­ed by the Knight Cen­tre for Jour­nal­ism in the Amer­i­c­as over a week ago, paint­ed pic­tures of me­dia self-cen­sor­ship and re­straint in the face of such vi­o­lence. Mak­ing the case for a pre­emp­tive analy­sis of the Caribbean re­al­i­ty be­came a hard-sell in the face of such ex­treme ac­counts, though Got­son Pierre, di­rec­tor of Al­ter­press Haiti, point­ed­ly re­lat­ed a tale of im­puni­ty in the case of me­dia as­sas­si­na­tions over the years. It was al­so dif­fi­cult to ar­gue that among the oth­er­wise be­nign West­min­ster democ­ra­cies of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean re­side the con­di­tions for a de­scent in­to sim­i­lar re­crim­i­na­tions against the press. In fact, the case was made that while Caribbean jour­nal­ists as a rule do not lose their lives, they face the threat of a loss of liveli­hoods lead­ing to equal­ly ef­fec­tive self-cen­sor­ship, si­lence and a gen­er­al tam­ing of the me­dia. In all in­stances, ad­vo­cates as­sem­bled in Austin agreed on the com­mon need for strate­gies for com­bat­ing both phys­i­cal and "in­sti­tu­tion­al" vi­o­lence against jour­nal­ists, as pre­scribed by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Free­dom of Ex­pres­sion, Catali­na Botero who spoke at the Fo­rum and who will be in Port-of-Spain for next month's World Con­gress of the In­ter­na­tion­al Press In­sti­tute (IPI).

Ac­cord­ing to Botero, the con­texts of armed con­flict, tran­si­tion­al de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es and nar­co-crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty had been read­i­ly iden­ti­fied as causative fac­tors. To that could have been added grow­ing po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion in long­stand­ing democ­ra­cies where there was no risk of a re­turn to mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ships since there was no such tra­di­tion on the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean. Botero's pre­scrip­tion of greater civ­il so­ci­ety sup­port for the work of the me­dia res­onat­ed through all the con­texts though. This, she ar­gued, was crit­i­cal to strength­en the work of or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als en­gaged in ad­vo­ca­cy on free­dom of ex­pres­sion and of the press. Benoit Hervieu, di­rec­tor of the Amer­i­c­as Desk of Re­porters With­out Bor­ders, al­so pro­posed that the man­dates of press free­dom or­gan­i­sa­tions should be ex­pand­ed to in­clude greater par­tic­i­pa­tion by lawyers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als. The point was raised at last week Sat­ur­day's spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) where a de­ci­sion was tak­en to ex­pand the or­gan­i­sa­tion's mem­ber­ship base. Botero al­so ad­vo­cat­ed the de­vel­op­ment of "spe­cialised" pro­tec­tion mech­a­nisms for jour­nal­ists along lines al­ready in place for wit­ness­es in the court sys­tem in the more se­vere in­stances. Her Unit­ed Na­tions coun­ter­part, Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Free­dom of Opin­ion and Ex­pres­sion Frank La Rue al­so in­tro­duced the need for mea­sures to com­bat the "le­gal ha­rass­ment" of jour­nal­ists and me­dia hous­es. The phe­nom­e­non is fre­quent­ly not­ed in Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions through le­gal ac­tion clear­ly de­signed to damp­en me­dia en­thu­si­asm for the cov­er­age of se­lect­ed is­sues. La Rue said the idea of pro­tec­tion for jour­nal­ists should be "holis­tic" and cov­er both di­rect and in­di­rect at­tacks. The sug­ges­tion res­onat­ed favourably among Fo­rum par­tic­i­pants and a de­c­la­ra­tion on the is­sue was ex­pect­ed at the end of their de­lib­er­a­tions.