Paraguay journalism groups have denounced what they call the “persecutory attitude” of the management at Canal 9 TV Cerro Corá in their actions against its employees, which came to a peak when the station abruptly canceled a news show after 17 years on the air, Paraguay.com reports.
The Paraguayan Journalists’ Syndicate (SPP) and the Paraguayan Journalists’ Forum (FOPEP) highlighted a series of “irregularities and arbitrary measures” taken by the management, which included firings, abrubt job description changes, and hiring foreign workers to take positions once done by Paraguayan journalists.
According to Ultimahora.com, the SPP “denounces and repudiates the persecutory attitude, verbal abuse, arbitrary workplace changes, rules to not do interviews in Guaraní, and program cancellations” at Canal 9.
Media workers at the station were most upset by the rule against interviews in Guaraní, one of Paraguay’s official languages, La Nación reports. The human resources director said that interviews in the language would be translated into Spanish, because several Canal 9 programs were rebroadcast in other parts of Latin America.
Manuel Cuenca, host of “La Revista de la Semana” (The Weekly Journal), the news show that was controversially canceled, told Cuarto Poder that the station’s actions were “persecution” of Paraguayan culture.
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.
