Just 2 Percent of Latin Americans Are Rated As Having Free Media Simeon Tegel - GlobalPost
go to original May 26, 2014

Stop shooting the messenger. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)

Democracy may have swept almost all of Latin America, but one of its pillars is looking shaky.

Press freedom in the region has sunk to a five-year low. Now just 2 percent of the region's population lives in a completely free media environment — on par with the Middle East and North Africa.

That’s according to the latest annual survey by Freedom House, a Washington, DC advocacy group. South of the Rio Grande, it says, journalists are finding it harder and harder to operate without being censored, harassed and, in some cases, murdered.

Repression by governments and violent retribution by criminal gangs, including drug cartels, are the main culprits.

Also several countries still have oppressive defamation laws that can send reporters to jail for simply doing their jobs.

“It’s an excellent tool for silencing journalists, especially in countries like ours where the justice system is so corrupt,” Adriana Leon of the Peru office of the Press and Society Institute (IPYS), a Latin American journalism watchdog, said of criminal defamation laws.

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