Silence screams. I learned this many years ago in journalism school. Silence is a scoop. Silence is as enlightening an account of what cannot or will not be laid bare as a slobbering confession. Unlike open scandal, which peaks in an orgy of vitriol and reproof, then dies, silence leaves a trail of churlish speculation and a scent of putrescence. It is bad enough when governments hide behind a wall of secrecy. It is infinitely worse when the press --- the conscience of a free society --- sheepishly abdicates its mission and colludes with government to keep the public in the miasmic murk of ignorance.

Readers of The Panama News will recall my open letter to President Ricardo Maduro of Honduras (see the May 12-25 edition). Critical of his administration and asking "hard" questions, the letter was written and disseminated when Mr. Maduro, his press secretary and his consul general in Los Angeles --- after pledging to cooperate --- ignored a three-month sustained effort by this writer to secure a face-to-face interview with the chief of state.

Published in Guatemala City, Madrid, Managua, Mexico City, Panama and several Spanish-language newspapers in the United States, the letter was steadfastly kept out of print by five of the six Honduran media to which it was submitted.

Honduras This Week (HTW), the moribund English-language periodical which survives on government subsidy advertising, initially agreed to publish it on condition that it not be the first to do so. When advised that Diario Tiempo had bravely opted to break ranks with Honduras' other three mainstream dailies, HTW offered to publish it in a future edition, "suitably redacted and rid of any 'inconvenient thoughts'." (Translation: censored out of fear of losing revenue.) I politely declined.

Meanwhile, countless communications to the editors of El Heraldo, La Tribuna and La Prensa inquiring about the status of the letter, remain unacknowledged to date. Why these Honduran dailies opted not to run it is left to conjecture, none reassuring. A clear case of cowardice further debased by bad manners.

"He tells everyone how well he is doing. Veering away from the obvious and the painful, he pretends to care about the people and manages to lull a segment of his fiefdom into a false sense of well being." This is how a respected Honduran commentator described Mr. Maduro's "crude mimicry of Machiavelian principles."

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the veteran newsman clarified "obvious," as the president's increasingly repressive regime and "painful" as Honduras's crumbling economy and continuing cycle of misery, discontent, crime, violence and disease.

"His amorous escapades in Spain and Italy titillate the readers but his bankrupt leadership does not even elicit a whisper," he added.

Another well-known Honduran journalist whose identity I promised to protect, told me that "even in the best of cases, Maduro couldn't address your questions. He simply doesn't have the answers. The man is a dilettante who shoots from the hip and improvises as he goes along. Hoping for a change, I voted for him. I now realize what a mistake I made. The man is a disaster. But no one has the balls [sic] to say so publicly. He controls the media and journalists are afraid to criticize him. It is safer to cover the sensational, the gory, the vulgar and the absurdly banal."

Fearing that he might be "accidentally run over by a bus" or attend a press conference and "find arsenic in my Coke," a distinguished Honduran TV anchorman pleaded for understanding. "There is no free press in Honduras. It's for sale --- literally. Any journalist who values his life is forced to dilute his sense of ethics with a strong solution of practicality."

Recent revelations that ex-president Carlos Flores dished out three million Lempiras (about $150,000) in monthly bribes to the media prompted Mr. Maduro to counter that he doesn't have "any journalist" on his payroll. One does not have to be a cynic to assume that the pragmatic president, anxious to deflect attention from his embryonic and already abysmal record of governance, is emulating his predecessor with the gusto, impunity and effrontery characteristic of Central American dictators.

Like its neighbors, Honduras is drowning in a maelstrom of self-censorship, craven complicity and malfeasance. The media refuse to point fingers at the real source of malignancy: successive nepotistic dynasties of corrupt, power-hungry, plutocratic regimes that sold their soul to the US (and Japan, Korea, etc.) and have systematically raped the citizenry and robbed it of its right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Like its neighbors, Honduras lacks an independent, fearless and genuinely incorruptible voice that dares tell the emperor that he is parading bare-assed for all to see. Paralyzed with fear, the Honduran press, like that of its neighbors, will never admit that every single problem in the country can be traced to a symbiosis of greed, corruption, negligence, monumental ineptitude in high places, and crass ignorance, laziness and cowardice among the masses.

When the press capitulates to the government, all is lost. In the process, the lambs are led to slaughter by the wolves in a deafening silence of inertia, apathy and indifference.

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