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Major scandal for Panamanian journalism

Radio and TV "journalists" took $1.3 million to slant canal debate

by Eric Jackson, from other media

Didn't it strike you as odd that in this year's canal referendum campaign, none of the mainstream media analyzed the contents of any of the studies that were done for the project?

One of the reasons for that, which was well known, is that the media barons were bribed with huge ad accounts to refrain from any of that sort of reporting. But now it turns out that individual "journalists" --- including most of the leaders of the so-called professional organizations --- were also personally bribed.

Dutch journalist Okke Ornstein, who runs the Noriegaville website, obtained an Electoral Tribunal document naming names and sums, more than $1.3 million in payoffs to individuals working in radio and television. The amount of bribes to print and online "journalists" is unknown.

This is by no means the first example of politicians buying off members of this country's press corps --- in fact one of the first controversies that The Panama News covered in early 1995 was the revelation that then legislator (now Housing Minister) Balbina Herrera had dozens of journalists on a payroll. At the time we recognized that what Balbina did was sordid but not illegal, and treated it as a worse scandal for journalism that for politics. Nothing seems to have changed on that score except for the scale of corruption in Panamanian journalism.

The roster of radio and TV personalities who were on the take from the Torrijos administration is as follows:

Juan Carlos Tapia, Pedro Vásquez, Josefa Cedeño, Inocencia Araúz, Leroy Hubbard, Harmodio Icaza, Alberto Quiros Guardia, Guillermo Moreno, Rene Riscalla, Guillermo Valdes, Juan Chevalier, Alonso Pinzon, Néstor de Icaza, Euclides Fuentes, Rodrigo Pinzon, Carmen Villamontes, Cesar de Leon, Alvaro Alvarado, Aram Cisneros, Carlos Raúl López, José Escobar, Gisela Vergara, Carlos Salazar, José Luis Gil, Homero Londoño, Carmen Boyd, Luis Pimentel, Roberto Velásquez, José Francisco Vega, Daniel Blanco, Donald Quintero, Edwin Cabrera, Flor Altamiranda, Garrit Geneteau, Rafael B. Ayala, Ives Dawkins, Cristobal Chen, Clever David González, Vladimir Hernández, Alfonso Zamora, Hermelinda Fuentes, Melquilades Valencia, Milton Henríquez, Renato Pereira, Aquilino Ortega, Valerio Abrego, Dumas Castillero, Roosvelt Icaza, René Hernandez, Escolastico Calvo, José González, Alcides Quintero, Irene Hernández, Miguel A. Moreno G., Euclides Corro, Luis Alberto Testa, Víctor Nelson Juliao G., Otoniel González, Eric Rivera, Norman Scott, Juan A. Santos, Pana Angel Koruklis, Marcelino de León, Aurelia Escobar, Roberto Fernández, Rubén Dario Murgas Torraza, Ramón Staff, Gilberto Gallimore, Luis A. Gabarrete, Rafael Martínez, Delfia Cortes, Damaso García, Cesar Quijano, Erick Lara, Héctor Lewis, Hugo Cubilla, Carmen H. García, David Rodríguez Sánchez, Celestino Govea, Bernabé Hernández, Ramón Ernesto García, Gaspar Reyes, Ovidio Gonzáles, Angel Santos Rodríguez, Bladimir Poveda, Edison González, Gumersindo Domíngez, Moises Bosquez, Ricaurte Vidal, Maria José Guzman, Luis Delgado Morales, Galo A. Castillo, Pedro Alain, Miguel Hidalgo, Víctor Eliseo Rodríguez, Oriel Jaramillo, Italo Rojas, Erick Prince, Hadulfo Vásquez, Ramón Guerra, José Vásquez, Rubiela Araúz, Juan B. Gómez, Ramón Cano Mojica, Roger René Rodríguez, Eduardo Esteba, Fernando Arce, Amarilis Guerrero.

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