Freedom of the press in Panama: the AG's views (and mine)
(Editor's note: This letter makes reference to an interview with
Panamanian Attorney General Jose Antonio Sossa by El Panama America's Henry
Raymont, which appeared in its Spanish original on June 1 and is available online
at http://www.epasa.com/El_Panama_America/archive/06012001/nation01.html or
in English translation from David Fishlow at David@Fishlow.com. This letter
also refers to its author's translation of the Moscoso administration's proposed
press law and his footnotes to it, which are available in the news section of
this issue of The Panama News Online. The author of this letter is an American
journalist, publicist and labor activist who owns a farm in Volcan, and whose
career highlights include several years as press secretary for the Attorney
General of the State of New York, six years with the ACLI and, some time before,
several years as editor of El Malcriado, the English and Spanish newspapers
of the United Farm Workers Union.)
The debate over freedom of the press in Panama is hot and heavy
these days (at least among the press and politicians), but unfortunately it
is proceeding with a good deal of confusion on both sides. One the one hand,
the pro-limitation forces (with whom I ardently disagree) simply come from a
different legal and ethical tradition, believing that all institutions, including
the press, should be subject to “reasonable” regulation by the government.
There is simply no recognition in many quarters of the impossibility of deciding
upon what is “reasonable” in such matters, or of the dangers inherent
in empowering public officials to gag voices raised against them. Of course
their view presupposes “checks and balances,” such as an enlightened
and well-functioning judiciary disposed to control abuses by the executive power,
which is a preposterous notion in Panama, as in many other countries.
When Attorney General Jose Antonio Sossa of Panama says in the El Panama America
interview, that if the press wants to be considered a “Fourth Branch”
of government, it has to be subject to the same limitations applied to other
branches of government, he reveals astonishing confusion on his own part. He
simply does not understand the difference between the three real branches and
a “ Fourth Branch,” with or without the quotation marks. He does not
see society's interest in allowing certain excesses by the press in the interest
of diversity of opinion. He just doesn’t get it. He is obsessed by the
elusive distinction between fact and opinion, not recognizing that when El Panama
America states in a neutral tone that there are more than 150 criminal prosecutions
ongoing against journalists for defamation and contempt of authority, some may
read this statement of bald fact as an assertion of a forceful opinion. It reminds
me of a Borges quote from George Bernard Shaw. Asked whether he believed that
the Holy Ghost wrote the Bible, Shaw said he thought the Holy Ghost wrote the
Bible and all other books as well (referring of course to the gift of human
intelligence, which, presumably, the Holy Ghost did not bestow exclusively upon
graduates of the U of P j-school).
He also demonstrates a terrifying naiveté when he rails
against one paper’s having become an agent of political power, as if this
were a sin, when in fact all newspapers espouse some kind of political point
of view, in Panama more obviously so than elsewhere, and this in itself is not
evil. In fact, when the paper he claims is political had a good deal to do with
encouraging resistance to the Noriega dictatorship, it was exercising its political
power, hardly something to be ashamed of. Politics is the engine of democracy,
and the interplay of views is what makes the whole system work. The Wall Street
Journal, The New York Times, El Pais, Le Monde, the Frankfurther Algemeine Zeitung
and Granma are all value neutral? Are they all unpatriotic or libertine papers?
Gimme a break.
When he refers to excesses that have led to an “internal
revolution,” which is far from the case, he sounds like a cross between
Joe McCarthy and Joe Stalin, who had more in common than either would have recognized.
Even if one accepts the fact --- as I do --- that Panamanian newspapers, perhaps
to a greater degree than newspapers in some countries --- have many grave faults,
one might disagree with the Attorney General about the appropriate remedy for
those faults. Government controls on content, or retribution for independence,
will not remedy anything. He wouldn’t come close to understanding that.
Neither would the professors on the faculty of the University of Panama's school
of journalism. The dean has been calling for more government control on the
press for some time. This is not Berkeley we’re talking about. All these
voices call for the government to protect the people from their own ideas, an
odd notion when looks at the average legislator's or bureaucrat's mentality
(I was one of the latter for years).
On the other hand, when reformers, such as international organizations,
human rights advocates, and outspoken Panamanian journalists approach the problem
by proceeding from the context of US legislation and semi-settled US principles
of law, they ignore the fact that there is virtually no constituency in Panama
holding such views, and that their thundering pronouncements, sometimes inaccurate,
as is frequently the case when they describe privileges pertaining to protection
of sources, their call either distorts the US reality or simply falls on deaf
ears in Panama. I have been associated with a lot of so-called “human rights
organizations” over the last 30 years, and I have learned that unless appropriate
constituencies are created in the countries affected, most of the pronouncements
by us do-gooders are pointless. Read about the causes of the collapse of the
Soviet government, or the history of Russia since, and you will find precious
little about the "dissidents" who were such heroes in the West. Unless
human rights reforms are understood in the context of local political realities,
they are airy generalizations. To try to understand Panamanian politics as merely
a question of pro-Noriega-PRD vs. anti-Noriega Arnulfismo with a smattering
of other opposition parties, is to misunderstand entirely the nature of Panamanian
politics.
To fail to consider the resentment of foreigners in any country
with 30 or 40 percent real un- and under-employment, is to fail to understand
that the professional demise of Gustavo Gorritti at La Prensa was not entirely
due to his being a “good guy” resented by the “bad guys.”
It appears he will now serve as press secretary to President Toledo of Peru,
whose previous press secretary, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, resigned in protest over
Toledo's alleged payoffs to the press. Political life in Panama, as elsewhere,
is complicated, and oversimplification helps nobody.
Having said all that, maybe I should note that I think the proposed
press law is cockamamie, that Sossa is out of control, and that the Administration
doesn’t seem to care much about free expression either. Under the proposed
press law, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario or Alvaro
Vargas Llosa, or Pablo Neruda, all of whom practiced journalism at one time
or another, would all be barred from working as reporters in Panama under the
new law. OK, folks, if that’s what you want....
What views written by paid or unpaid contributors other than
licensed journalists could be published? After all, freedom of the press originally
meant access to the machine, not ex post facto freedom from legal responsibility
for what was published. This is unclear. Are columnists journalists? Copy editors?
These are all questions left unanswered.
Footnotes may be viewed as a pedantic appurtenance, but those
in the my translation of the proposed press law, which appears in the news section
of this edition of The Panama News Online, are not meant to demonstrate anybody’s
erudition, least of all mine. They seemed to me to be the most convenient way
of raising what I consider, in my capacity as John Q. Citizen in the United
States and formerly a Juan Q. Green-card Alien in Panama, important questions
about the debate now in progress. Some Panamanians would consider these observations
none of my business. So?
David M. Fishlow
These declarations are shameful
As a citizen and human rights activist, as well as a university professor, lawyer
and journalist, I publically repudiate the shameful declarations of Attorney
General Jose Antonio Sossa. His lack of objectivity is a threat to citizens'
liberties and we must strengthen our national and international efforts to remove
him from his position and and try him for attacking the internal and international
personality of the Panamanian state, and for being a dangerous enemy of freedom
of expression and human rights.
Miguel Antonio Bernal
(Editor's note: The statements to which Dr. Bernal refers are found in the June
1 issue of El Panama America, available online at http://www.epasa.com/El_Panama_America/archive/06012001/nation01.html,
and in the lead story and Betty Brannan Jaen's opinion page column in the June
3 issue of La Prensa, which are available in that paper's online archive.)
Open letter to the City of Knowledge
Deeply concerned by the contents of a paid advertisement that your institution
published in the classifieds section of La Prensa on June 4, 2001, we send it
to you as a reminder, and with the aim that you offer an explanation about certain
aspect of said ad.
It's about the ad in which the City of Knowledge Foundation solicits candidates
for the position of operations secretary. The advertisement sets out a number
of requisites that make up the "profile" that the institution has
set for the job, among which appears under the heading "other" that
of "good looking" (buena presencia).
Moreover, at the end of the text of the ad in question, it says to "bring
a resume with a recent photo to the receptionist at the City of Knowledge, Building
95 Clayton, or email vilma@ciudaddelsaber.org.pa."
Given the two aspects pointed out above, we repeat, that it's worrisome in light
of the reiterated complaints by many citizens that the requisites of "good
looking" and "a resume with recent photo" constitute suggestions
of discrimination and exclusion, we strongly urge you to offer a public explanation
about the presence of the same in an advertisment for a job at such a respected
institution as the City of Knowledge.
In hope of your consideration of this painful subject, we await your response.
