Just minutes after the director and founder of Canal 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora, and his press officer, Lucía Pineda Ubau, were forcibly removed by the Police from their workplace on the night of December 21, 2018 , the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Post Office (Telcor) issued an expedited statement where canceled the transmission of the channel; at that time it was the most watched in the country.
“As of 9:00 pm, 100% Noticias is not authorized to broadcast,” published the entity, then headed by Orlando José Castillo, who had served as director since 2007, when Daniel Ortega assumed the presidency of Nicaragua.
However, before that, Mora denounced pressure from Castillo to make a drastic change in the programming and omit reporting on the protests that took place in 2018 and that left at least 300 dead. However, by refusing, retaliation was swift.
Telcor is the regulatory body for telecommunications and postal service in Nicaragua and has its origins in Sandinism, being founded in 1982, after the triumph of the revolution.
When Ortega returned in 2007, he used key figures to direct the entity that has great powers to regulate the media. That is where Orlando Castillo came into action, who remained in office for thirteen years, until his death.
With Castillo facing Telcor, Ortega began to close several local radio stations critical of his management, but it was a phenomenon that occurred silently within the country. At the same time, Castillo granted television frequencies to the children of Daniel Ortega.
“The children of Commander Ortega, because they are children of Commander Ortega, you are not going to send them to work on the moon or you are going to tell them: you have to work in the Oriental market or dedicate yourself to real estate,” Castillo argued when being consulted by the newspaper La Prensa in 2013 about the granting of frequencies for the media emporium that the children of the couple in power in Nicaragua were beginning to weave.
Castillo died in 2020, sanctioned by the United States, and then Nahíma Díaz, who is part of Ortega’s close circle, came into play. His father is the head of the National Police, Francisco Díaz, who is also President Ortega’s brother-in-law.
Both the director of Telcor and the director of the Police are sanctioned by the United States for their “complicity” with the administration of Sandinista Daniel Ortega.
“The function of Telcor is to censor”
According to the journalist Lucía Pineda Ubau, released in June 2019, Nahíma Díaz is only “an instrument of trust in that circle of nepotism of the Ortega Murillo family.” And Díaz’s function is the same as that of his predecessor Castillo: to censor the independent press.
“Telcor is a political weapon to annihilate independent media outlets,” says the current director of 100%Noticias, which today only remained as a digital outlet after its frequency was canceled, and adds that Díaz “in a democratic country would never be director of the telecommunications regulator.
Joel Gutierrez, former CEO of Telcor during the government of former liberal president Enrique Bolaños, told the VOA that during that administration, the entity respected freedom of the press and political pluralism existed.
He explains that despite the fact that the government of former president Bolaños “was the target of criticism,” at no time was any type of retaliation taken against any media outlet, including the Sandinista Front.
“The person in charge of managing the renewal of the licenses of the different radio stations and television channels that they had at that time (the Sandinistas) was Rafael Ortega Murillo, son of Daniel Ortega,” recalls Gutiérrez.
Joel indicates that “what we did was to review all the technical aspects and if everything was in order, then there was no reason to withhold the renewal and we are talking about the stations that said barbarities about Don Enrique, may he rest in peace” , recalled the journalist.
“There was no kind of retaliation for political reasons, in the least, frankly,” he says.
In the first half of August alone, Telcor has closed at least 17 local media outlets in Nicaragua, for which the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) warned of a “new information desert in the interior of the country.”
One of the last media outlets closed was Radio Dario. The regulatory entity controlled by Ortega accused the station, located in western Nicaragua, of allegedly committing several infractions, including modifying and altering “the authorized facilities,” which in its opinion “constitutes a cause for cancellation of the license. ”.
Telcor sanctions
According to the General Law of Telecommunications and Postal Services, serious infractions include “non-compliance with the general principles and the obligations expressed in the regulations approved by Telcor”.
There are also “very serious infractions” such as “failure to notify reliably that a service will be terminated; suspending service without just cause; or refuse to deliver the information requested by Telcor in due time and form”.
But the former president of Telcor, Joel Gutiérrez, and the director of Radio Darío, Anibal Toruño, separately indicate that the reasons for the cancellation of recent stations “are absurd.”
Gutiérrez remembers that during the liberal governments the transmitters were out of adjustment and then one station began to interfere with the signal of another, but nobody’s license was taken away.
“Those things usually happen, we simply made sure that the problem was corrected, but from that to removing licenses, it seems rather that it is for everyone who does not wake up praising the vice president (Rosario Murillo),” he said.
Joel Gutiérrez points out that in the case of Radio Darío “they cannot stand it because it is an independent station that reports according to its editorial line, which is not simply covering official events.”
remove licenses, it seems rather that it is for everyone who does not wake up praising the vice president (Rosario Murillo)”, he said.
Removing licenses, it seems rather that it is for everyone who does not wake up praising the vice president (Rosario Murillo)” – Former director of Telcor
“To me, all these supposed reasons why the stations were closed are a lack of respect, a lack of respect for the intelligence of the people, when this is clearly an act of repression in the most vulgar style of Somocism. They are doing the same thing that Somocismo did, trying to give justifications; What they say is disrespectful. It seems to me a joke in bad taste, “concluded Joel Gutiérrez.
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