Martinelli blasts TV newscasts that dwell on violence

President Martinelli visits with the Latin American Business Council.
Photo by the Presidencia

Martinelli savages TV news shows, saying that they drive foreign investors away from Panama

TV station owner president rails against newscasts
by Eric Jackson

Ricardo Martinelli owns a reported four and one-half percent stake in the TVN television network. It's the Motta family, not the president, who has the most editorial control. His Super99 supermarket chain is one of the major buyers of television advertising, as is the government over which he presides and as was the expensive election campaign that he ran last year. As a major advertiser he probably has more say over television content than as a minority shareholder in one of the networks.

At a January 22 meeting of the Latin American Business Council (CEAL), the president blasted the industry of which he is part owner. "The newscasts in Panama don't report news, they make news on the basis of presenting us as an unsafe country that has a great number of thefts, hold-ups and murders, and this is something that's doing great damage to us," Martinelli complained. Later he amplified his remarks, saying that visiting foreign business leaders had commented to him about the sensationalist crime-oriented news shows, complaining that all the televised gore hurts our chances of foreign investment and disparaging the things that are done in the competition for ratings.

There followed what passes for a public debate here, all quite predictable. Journalists by and large expressed fears of censorship, various people suggested that news coverage of violent crime generates more violent crime, and other discussions were about what's fit to broadcast, especially if kids will be watching. A meeting between the president and broadcasting executives was scheduled.

Some of the allegations of cause and effect were dubious:

Mostly, Panamanian TV isn't watched by foreign business executives who decide whether or not to invest in this country. US State Department reports about widespread corruption in our legal system surely drive away many more potential investors than the "if it bleeds it leads" editorial standards of our nightly news shows.
There really isn't any solid evidence that reporting about crime leads to a higher crime rate, although it certainly leads to a greater fear of crime. That said, notice the occasional phenomenon of "copycat crimes" that would not exist without news reports, and take notice of the frequency with which one may encounter inmates who call themselves "Frank Nitti" or "Al Capone" among those of a generation that watched The Untouchables and who are serving long prison sentences in the United States. There is surely a category of dumb criminals who, although it may have always been their destiny to be offenders, took their inspiration from lowbrow television programs.
There is some evidence that steady high doses of TV violence affects the ways that kids grow up seeing the world and relating to it, especially when family life has degenerated to the point that parents essentially use a television set as a babysitter. However, the exposure to violence that far more surely breeds more violence is when children bear live witness to real violence within their homes.

But as unconvincing as many of the proffered arguments about the damages caused by gory TV news programming may be, the president's objections strike a chord with many Panamanians. Although experts hired by people with pecuniary interests at stake can cite, dismiss or twist studies to support their points of view, there is no question that television is a powerful medium that can be used to influence the ways the people act --- for example, by convincing mass audiences of viewers who are not fools to vote for politicians who are. Not only news programming, but especially entertainment that treats violence as a just and even sexy sort of behavior, is unsettling for many who ponder its possible effects. Churches and educators frequently criticize such images, notwithstanding what any of the social sciences may say about them, because their messages are or can be taken as anti-moral and anti-social.

And while few journalists want government censorship or even more restrictive voluntary controls on news reporting coming down from their editors and program directors, Martinelli will find many a journalist who concurs with his anti-violence tastes in his television critic role. However, the shared objections from the world of journalism tend to be for reasons that the president does not cite, such as:

The constant repetition of little video clips of the police taking the body away or standing around the chalked profile of the murder victim, or of the assault victim holding his bleeding face, serves to occupy time that could be spent reporting on other things. It's essentially a method by which TV executives cut costs by hiring fewer reporters. That hits journalists in the pocketbook.
When people of Ricardo Martinelli's social class are killed in accidents, commit suicide or are the victims of violent crimes, their images never grace the television or tabloid news media. Only those who "don't count" in rabiblanco society become the subjects of gory news coverage. This disparate treatment by the corporate mainstream media is one of the most flagrant examples of the class divisions in Panamanian society.
The exaggerated attention that many of the news media give to the violent and the lurid forces many important news stories out of the public view. Given his information control record when he was minister of canal affairs and the ways that he relates to the press as president, many a journalist will reject the notion that Ricardo Martinelli wants a better informed public. But the president's differences with the reporters would be mainly disagreements on editorial stance: whether glowing accounts of what the government says it's doing right or investigative reports on situations the president might not want to discuss, the undue attention to more sensational matters drives other stories out of the nightly news.
In 2008, if one wants to believe the National Police, 18 of every 100,000 Panamanians were the victims of serious violent crimes. In 2009, that was 24 out of every 100,000. Consider that a large percentage of these victims were either participants in the illegal drug trade or other organized criminal activities or were members of youth street gangs. Yes, the ordinary citizen or foreign resident of Panama who is not a gangster runs a risk of being a victim of a violent crime, but no, it's not nearly so high a risk as the television news shows or the more sensationalist newspapers suggest. But the inflated fear of crime increases the number of people who are afraid to talk to reporters, afraid to talk to their neighbors and essentially incapable of participating in the much-discussed "civil society." It's the unwarranted fear, rather than the unfortunate bloodshed, that's most paralyzing to Panamanian democracy.

In the same week that Mr. Martinelli complained about Panama's morbid television newscasts, Venezuela suspended the broadcasts of six cable channels for their failure to air a presidential speech; Peru took away a television station's license over its coverage of indigenous protests in the Amazonia region; there were more than two dozen journalists serving long prison terms in Cuba and the body of Mexican radio journalist José Luis Romero --- who had been abducted, tortured and shot --- was found in the outskirts of the Sinaloa town where he lived and worked. Even if the Panamanian president is no great friend of the press, he is far from its worst enemy in the region.

Martinelli's honeymoon with the electorate appears to be over, to the extent that his supporters are citing polls taken last October to "prove" that this is not so. Some of the disenchantment comes from a sense that crime is spinning out of control, and the president blames that widely shared impression on the media. His past acts and his present interests suggest that he wants to control the content of the news. However, he won't get that control without a huge fight against families as wealthy as his and a ragtag army of journalists, many of them as amenable to being censored as cats are to being bathed.

However, as a television critic Mr. Martinelli may have won the debate according to the jury of public opinion, because the things he cites as licentious and unbecoming really are.