“Last January, the Governmental Palace [of Peru] gathered with some journalistic unions to develop a ‘Protocol’ that would regulate journalistic coverage during protests, in the midst of several police attacks against reporters. Some [journalists] did not attend, others withdrew along the way, and just a few stayed to the end. Even so, the publication of the document in the newspaper El Peruano fell like a bucket of cold water on the latter, because their proposals had been ignored. The Ministry of the Interior published it unilaterally.
The protocol for the journalistic coverage of the protests against the government of Dina Boluarte, published yesterday, March 1, in the official newspaper El Peruano, did not include the observations raised by the journalists' institutions that answered the call from the Government Palace for its preparation, and therefore it is not considered by those as a 'consensual' document.
[...]
A first criticism points to the very title of the document, by naming what should simply be called ‘protest’ as 'disturbances to public order' instead.
Another line of questioning relates to Point 8.2.5., which establishes where journalists who cover violent demonstrations should be located, and which warns them that 'if the instructions given by the National Police are not complied with, and there is any impact on the physical integrity of the journalists or communicators, [such impacts] will be their own responsibility, thus casting aside the duty of the State to protect journalistic work.”
