Editorial, The scandalous state of Panamanian journalism

Consider some recent developments in Panamanian journalism:

• La Prensa, ever so solicitous of its own freedom of the press, has editorially called for the criminal prosecution of those who published a leaflet urging workers to join in the September 23 strike. The leaflet did not advocate violence or the overthrow of the government, but it did take a position contrary to La Prensa’s, and for that reason the daily newspaper wants to have its authors thrown in jail.

• El Siglo, citing an unknown source from an unidentified position to “know,” said that under Juan Jované’s administration medicines MIGHT HAVE BEEN diverted from Seguro Social to Colombia’s FARC guerrillas. El Siglo is notoriously sleazy and unreliable and that “report” was murkier than usual, yet the television stations, La Prensa and El Panama America used it as an excuse to run Jované’s denials of the allegation rather than to delve into the subject matter of his arguments about Seguro Social.

• Similarly, although NOBODY alleged in any way that the Cuban government financed student militants or the September 23 strikers, ALL of the major media ran stories featuring the Cuban ambassador’s denial that such financial support was given.

• A delegation of Venezuelan businessmen, including an executive with Globovision, came to town and was treated by the television stations and most of the daily newspapers as the collective voice of the Venezuelan people. No opposing point of view was presented or acknowledged. Globovision is owned by Gustavo Cisneros, the main financier of the efforts to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and also owner of the Univision cable network and principal owner of DirecTV. In the latter roles Cisneros has a business relationship with the Panamanian television industry. None of the local TV stations mentioned this.

• RPC-TV’s “Codigo Cuatro” television show of September 23 featured a video of the editor of The Panama News, whom it accused of being a “tourist” posing as a local journalist. When confronted with the facts of the matter, the show’s producer said that the baseball cap worn while taking photos of SUNTRACS strikers identified Eric Jackson as a tourist, and because that publisher knows everybody who’s anybody in Panamanian journalism and he doesn’t know Jackson or The Panama News, the show won’t run a correction. As in “I work for MEDCOM so that makes me somebody, and you’re nobody, so that gives my show the right to lie about you.”

• During the September 23 confrontations between student militants and police on and around the University of Panama campus, all of the television stations “embedded” themselves on the police side, positioning themselves behind police lines and thus only recording events from the cops’ physical point of view.

• After the firing of Juan Jované, the Moscoso administration flooded the commercial television stations with paid ads attacking Jované and raising red herring arguments about Seguro Social. The commentary expressed on those stations almost exclusively repeated Mireya’s arguments. This bribery of commercial television was not mentioned by any of the mainstream media.

• More than two weeks after the September 11 confrontations between police and student demonstrators, National Police Chief Barés alleged that on September 11 student radicals tried to set fire to the University of Panama chemistry building. Both La Prensa and El Panama America made it their lead story, treating Barés’s allegation with the presumption that it was true. None of the student protesters were asked about it. Moreover, the police did not come on campus that day, and if the students who threw rocks at the police wanted to set fire to the chemistry building, there was nobody there to stop them. Yet such a fire was not set, no physical evidence of such an attempt was shown and no witness to any such attempt was produced.

So let us understand what is happening in the Panamanian mainstream media, in the context of what is happening in Panama.

The country is very unstable at the moment. Most people despise the government and lack confidence in most of society’s institutions. People within the institutions for which there is a certain amount of public respect --- the Catholic Church, for example --- find themselves seriously divided about what to do.

The labor unions and the political left have not forced Mireya to back down on her moves related to Seguro Social not because the president is strong, but because neither the labor movement nor the left have captured the public imagination. As weak as this hated administration may be, it will not be moved to change its ways by hackneyed slogans and ritualistic street protests. Were the left to constitute itself as a political party with a position on the ballot, it would count on the hostility of all the establishment media but would still probably outpoll the Mireyistas in 2004. However, the Panamanian left seems content to worship caricatures of other countries’ revolutions and relegate itself to being a protest movement against the things that those in power do, rather than mounting a challenge that might replace the present power elites and give the left a major say in how this country is run.

Meanwhile, the Panamanian mainstream corporate media are going the way of their yellow Venezuelan cousins. In Venezuela the private mainstream media are owned by members of an old political and business elite that was discredited and ousted from power. Panama's corporate media occupy an analogous position to that of their Venezuelan counterparts before the rise of Hugo Chávez.

Yes, Mireya is trampling on the public’s right to know, but so are Panama's big media corporations and the advertising cartel that backs them. And notice how, both with respect to the labor-left and Endara-Ford challenges to business and politics as usual, those media aligned with the PRD-Partido Popular alliance and those loyal to the Arnulfista-MOLIRENA-Liberal Nacional bloc make common cause in manner that violates all notions of fairness and objectivity.

Sooner or later change will come to Panama, because the current situation cannot be sustained. But when change comes, it will be bitterly opposed by the pompous elites who claim the right to control and distort the information that the Panamanian people get.

editorial

The scandalous state of Panamanian journalism

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The scandalous state of
Panamanian journalism