Madrid, Oct 27 (EFE).- The 78th General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) on Thursday claimed the exercise of free, independent and quality journalism as the best “lifeline” of democracy and the common good , and denounced that violence is “one of the worst challenges” of the profession.
The IAPA meeting, which is being held in the Spanish capital from today until next Sunday, is the first in person after three years due to the pandemic, and it is attended by representatives of prominent international media outlets.
On the first day of the Assembly, the president of the IAPA, the Honduran Jorge Canahuati, recalled that 39 journalists have been murdered in the last year in America.
The IAPA president defended free, independent, and quality journalism as “the most reliable lifesaver of democracy and the common good,” and encouraged the media to continue working to neutralize authoritarian rulers.
In the last six months, he said, 24 journalists have been murdered, eleven of them in Mexico and the rest in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, the United States, Haiti, Honduras and Paraguay.
Canahuati also denounced how some governments use the courts to close media outlets and specifically cited the 300 media outlets that have been closed in Venezuela in recent years.
But he also mentioned Nicaragua and Cuba, countries that “have become great exporters of journalists in exile.”
Given the difficult situation that the media are experiencing, with a considerable drop in revenue from advertising, the president of the IAPA made a self-criticism by acknowledging that “we did not all do the digital transformation.”
However, he also denounced the use that some technological platforms make of the informative content of the media without paying anything for the information and highlighted that, in addition, these web platforms monopolize advertising.
In this sense, he demanded that the platforms “pay a fair and reasonable remuneration for the journalistic content that they distribute and monetize.”
THE FIGHT AGAINST FAKE NEWS
The president of the EFE Agency, Gabriela Cañas, made a call at the opening of the Assembly to “join efforts in verifying news”, a task that she considered “essential to spread the truth”, while calling for “more solidarity effectively” with the media that suffer attacks on freedom of expression.
The Spanish journalist pointed out as a danger to freedom of information “the falsehoods that circulate, mostly on social networks”, with consequences such as populism, which she defined as “the natural result of lies and simplistic proclamations”.
For this reason, he asked to “join efforts in verifying news” and showed EFE’s willingness to ally “with all the reliable actors interested” in this task, which he described as “essential” to spread the truth and for the viability of the media.
MESSAGES FROM ABROAD
From Argentina, the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, denounced the situation of journalism in Latin America: “It is not tolerable that every month at least one journalist dies there,” he said and offered data from the United Nations that adds up to 14 reporters killed in that region in 2021.
Albares pointed out that «the new information channels have been a great opportunity to escape the control of those powers that threaten freedom of information but at the same time they are a challenge that we have to face, the filtering of information. It is everyone’s job to combat false information », he recalled.
Tawfik Jessassi, deputy director general of UNESCO, also intervened with a message, delving into the fact that the areas of Latin America and the Caribbean are among the most dangerous for journalists, since 25% of all deaths have occurred in this region.
However, “the exercise of journalism in the Americas is extremely important to hold governments accountable in this digital age, which is causing us to face very important challenges,” he said. EFE
