The Paraguayan Press is Threatening Freedom of Expression
By José Luis Simón G.

Ten years after the start of the "transition to democracy" in Paraguay, freedom of the press is at risk. Paradoxically, the main threat comes from . . . sectors of the press itself.

This is in line with the authoritarian, political and cultural tradition that has predominated in the history of Paraguay and, at the same time, explains the weakness of civil society, including now, when there are signs of recovery in this sphere of reality. Consequently, the phenomena of public opinion, although still very weak, are very recent.

Given this historic background, influential news media are becoming expressions of an authentic "de facto power" in progress. These are journalistic organizations linked to economic and political interests whose roots are in the recent authoritarian past.

The Paraguayan road to democracy thus faces additional dangers of a press that does not demonstrate a genuine democratic vocation, although daily the newspapers preach in their editorials a supposed compromise with the ideal of an open society.

During the greater part of almost two centuries of independence, we Paraguayans have suffered under various anti-democratic regimes, during which we have been denied the advantages of freedom, among them, of the press. So it was not unusual that a contemporary authoritarian, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), oppressed us for nearly 35 years, denying us freedom of expression.

Democracy without Communism and the cold war

The long and terrible decades of the Stroessner dictatorship coincided almost chronologically with the polarizing cold war (1947-1989). Obsessed with an anti-Communist "national security" policy, the United States, hegemonic superpower of the hemisphere, gave full support (economical, technical, diplomatic, military and security) to Paraguay's presidency, without anyone ever having met a Paraguayan president. Everything was justified in the alliance between Washington and the "democracy without Communism" of Stroessner.

Since the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977-81), the highly ideological "securitinization" of

U.S. foreign policy started to change. Forgotten international values like democracy and human rights were revived, something maintained by the very conservative Ronald Reagan in his two administrations. But during the eighties, when Stroessner kept his oppressive regime fossilized, one of the characteristics of this anachronistic authoritarian model, with some flavoring of totalitarian, was the fierce and systematic persecution of those who had anything to do with freedom of expression and freedom of the press, fundamental qualities of open societies, whose juridical-political form is the Rule of Law. Such freedoms are the best way of measuring the degree of liberty in any society.

An unusual political opening

The "transition" started in 1989, thanks to a coup led by more flexible and dissident sectors, unhappy with the immobility of a hardened regime that endangered the interests of powerful groups. We put the term transition in quotation marks because it was not a question of Paraguay of 1989 returning to a lost democracy, but of establishing it for the first time, a democratic system like the "poliarchy" theorized by American economic Robert Dahl.

Despite its failings, the transition has its virtues, far from the least being a political opening that advanced human rights. We experienced, in this historic period, the broadest freedom of the press that Paraguay had seen since its founding as a republic in 1811.

Authoritarian society and the press

At the time of the liberalizing coup of 1989, civil society was naturally very weak, as evidenced by such signs as: a lack of public opinion; a serious educational crisis at all levels (primary, secondary and university), which also had a negative consequence for the training of journalists; and the absence of preoccupation by journalism organizations for the improvement (professional and ethical) of their human resources.

That explains why, in such an authoritarian culture, the "boss" (that is, the company, which in Paraguay is usually family owned) is always right, and the employee is generally not the most capable but the most obliging, if not the most servile.

The democratic opening that enables us to enjoy unrestricted freedom of the press occurred in an awakening society, one not very demanding of news quality; nor do professional journalists find in the media or in the universities encouragement to study and advance their careers. Besides, the media companies are usually interested only in profit at any price and, almost exclusively, in the modernization of their equipment.

Professionalism, ethics and training, as far as we can remember, were never a policy of the local news media. And even the largest and most combative journalists' organization – the Paraguayan Union of Journalists – was very late in realizing that professionalism, ethics and training are fundamental obligations of any journalist proud of being one.

Press or publicity agencies?

The worst is that, with exceptions that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, the majority of Paraguay's news media, including the most economically successful, are not "chemically pure" communications companies but rather spokespersons for powerful economic and political interests.

This conspires against the quality of news and even its variety because the real "business" is not seeking and disseminating the truth but defending, at times dishonestly, the sectarian interests they represent. In times of crisis like those we have been living through in Paraguay, this becomes very dangerous for journalistic transparency.

In no way is the legitimacy of the press to defend positions and take self-interested stands being questioned. What is being criticized, as being very dangerous, is that the economic and political interests behind the media companies are not openly identified, since the media hide behind supposedly "objective" journalism.

The press, a new "de facto power?"

So the distorted and distorsioning press opts for the road of the "fourth power" when it should accept the role of the authentic counter-power seeking transparency. It even becomes something worse: an authentic and increasingly unbridled and dangerous "de facto power" similar in its anti-democratic ends to those exercised (unconstitutionally) by the militarists in the Latin American armed forces (without mentioning those in Paraguay) and those powerful economic groups (particularly here) which today operate in what Argentine public relations specialist Mariano Grondona has called "the state of corruption."

In other words, today in Paraguay it is better to own a media company in order to defend the "boss," or the business sector to which he belongs, or his allies, than to be a militarist or to have "friends" who are.

At times those interests are linked to the illegal accumulation of economic or political power. Other dangers can be added. For example, there is a tendency toward the monopolization or the "oligarchization" of the multimedia networks. Or perhaps, as a perverse consequence of the status of the press as a de facto power, unscrupulous groups, well-versed in the vernacular politicking, ally themselves with the judiciary - who, after all, owe them their appointments – to harass the journalists and the media concerns in the courts.

When elephants make love or fight

The Swahili of southeast Africa have a proverb, which more or less says: when elephants fight or make love, the field suffers. When the interests of the de facto powers (including the media's special interest propaganda) come into conflict, the fundamental freedoms of expression and of the press are endangered, and comprise the Rule of Law, which in Paraguay is still an aspiration to be conquered by the citizenry.

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(José Luis Simón G. is the former editor of the newspaper El Día and Radio Uno of Asunción, posts he resigned when he considered these media were becoming part of the de facto power. He currently has a program on Radio Cáritas)