By Maira Magro
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA) has published on its website an interactive map that counts 147 cases of aggression against journalists and threats to freedom of expression in the country in 2009.
The violations are broken down by date, geographic location, and characteristics about the event and the aggressor. The novelty is that, in addition to the traditional monitoring of threats and physical aggressions, the map also registers cases that involve pressure imposed by advertisers, media owners, and directors and employees of public entities.
This is the first time that potential offenders are registered in a database of this type, which also includes complaints about denials of access to public information, Diarios sobre Diarios says,
“We see that budgets for official and private advertising are increasingly used to pressure communications media as well as journalists," FOPEA explains. However, according to the organization, many of these cases are not publicized for fear of retaliation. "A central objective of monitoring is to help overcome those barriers."
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.
