By Isabela Fraga
The 68th Inter American Press Association (IAPA) General Assembly will conclude Tuesday, Oct. 16, with debates focused on the future of freedom of expression and journalism in the Americas. Since Friday, Oct. 12, reporters, media owners and critics have been meeting in São Paulo, Brazil to discuss crimes against the press, the sustainability of journalism, digital journalism and copyright rules.
As the press release for the Assembly noted, the meeting is taking place at a time when press freedom and freedom of expression are under attack. By July, 23 journalists were killed in Latin America in 2012. Criminal groups and governments alike attack journalists across the continent. Proposed bills aim to restrict reporters in some countries while in others elections have polarized the press, led to attacks on journalists from partisans and attempts to censor news.
Among the cloud of agression against the media, the National Newspaper Association released a report warning about the killings of and attacks on reporters in Brazil. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 75 percent of attacks on journalists go unpunished in the South American country. IAPA's Argentine delegate, Daniel Dessein, used the occasion to denounce " government resolutions, legal maneuvers, frightening statements from public officials, and actual physical attacks on journalists," reported the newspaper Estado de São Paulo.
A survey released at the Assembly on Monday, Oct. 15, for example, records government and political party involvement in acts of violence against the media, according to the newspaper O Globo. The New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said, "it's time to invest in Brazil," at a lunch on Sunday, Oct. 14, the same day The New York Times Company announced the launch of an online Portuguese-language edition of the newspaper in 2013 aimed at the country.
Along with Sulzberger, other notables in attendance included Paul Steiger of the New York-based ProPublica, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Ken Doctor, a U.S. news industry analyst, and the founder and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, Rosental Calmon Alves.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
