21 Oct 13 | Americas, Honduras, News and features, Politics and Society
San Pedro Sula: Colon is prime farming and cattle territory in the Honduran Caribbean coast. Its geography extends across eight thousand plus kilometers through mountains, rivers and thick vegetation. It is a strategic territory and middle transit point for drug transshipments from South America to Mexico and the United States. At the helm of these operations are Mexican and Colombian traffickers, according to Colombian and Honduran police reports. Plantations of African Palm conceal clandestine landing strips, which were previously used by crop fumigation planes and where today small planes laden with cocaine land unrestricted, according to the Honduran Armed Forces.
The local chieftains are Javier and Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, brothers and former cattle rustlers who today oversee a multimillion-dollar empire. Their organized crime group is called Los Cachiros, which allegedly picks political candidates and has close links to local police, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Access Control, OFAC.
Until recently, few Hondurans knew about Los Cachiros. Journalists did not dare write about their activities. In fact, few reporters visit Colon, their territory, or other northern territories in this Central American country, where dozens of narco chieftains have built profitable drug trafficking networks with little scrutiny from the local press.
In June of this year, Hondurans finally read in the local press about the Maradiaga brothers and their organization. Something similar occurred with José Handal Pérez, a prominent businessman in San Pedro Sula, owner of a retail empire, which includes clothing stores, auto part shops and restaurants. Local media wrote about Handal Pérez in April, following the release of another report by the OFAC, which identified him as a drug transporter and money launderer.
“We published (the story) because the United States gave us information,” explained without hesitation a local newspaper editor who asked not to be identified in this article. “To investigate such matters in this country is very difficult. We can’t take the risk. Also no local authority would provide us with such evidence.”
Honduras has become the ideal transit spot for international drug traffickers. The country and its government institutions are mired with government corruption and ineffective or compromised public security forces, according to a September 2012 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean.” In the last four years since President Manuel Zelaya was deposed and President Porfirio Lobo was selected, an institutional crisis has hit the country, creating a power vacuum that has been exploited by local and international organized crimes groups, according to UNODC. Today Honduras has the highest per capita murder rate in the world with 91 murders per 100 thousand inhabitants. The crime statistics are higher in northern territories, where drug trafficking networks operate. The country also has one of the highest numbers of journalists killed, or attacked, in a country not at war.
The Mexican cartels—Zetas, Sinaloa y Gulf—have had a presence in Honduras for quite some time. Two Colombian criminal bands, The Rastrojos, who have a working relationship with Los Cachiros, and the Urabeños, have a presence in the country. Maras or organized youth gangs—MS13 and Mara 18, which originated in the nineties with deported gang members who grew up in low-income barrios in California—control barrios in some of the country’s most important cities. In La Ceiba, a Caribbean resort town that has a reputation as an important drug trafficking corridor, and where civil society is desperately trying to rebuild its tourist flow, youth gangs have proliferated and even determine who can live in their areas of control. Youth gangs throughout the country work as low-level level drug distributors and are sometimes subcontracted by the cartels as foot soldiers or enforcers, according to Honduran police and the UNODC.
Just Bloody Pictures
However, when reading most Honduran newspapers, readers go away with little understanding of what is occurring in the country. Most crime stories are written without context or explanation and are accompanied by bloody, gory pictures. Local media write these crime stories purposely, as a safety mechanism because of entrenched fear and trepidation among local reporters and editors, according to interviews with reporters and editors and a review of various newspapers in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula by Fundacion MEPI, a regional investigative journalism project based in Mexico City.
MEPI’s analysis found that the news media reports extensively about youth gang criminal activities, but they seldom write about the presence of international organized crime groups and their connections in Honduras to the security forces and to business and political sectors. In private interviews, editors, reporters and news analysts, who asked for anonymity recounted strategies applied in newsrooms to protect their staff of violence. Twenty-nine journalists have been murdered in Honduras in the last four years, with 16 of them were killed because of their work, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ. MEPI has completed similar investigations on how the media works under threat of violence in the Mexican regional press.
The content analysis by MEPI showed that seven out of ten stories about crime published in both San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa media did not include details about the victims, nor the possible reasons for the crime. Gruesome pictures were often spread across the pages with headlines such as: “Found dead after visiting his Mother,” “Three men are executed and placed in plastic bags,” or “Transvestite is taken out of his house and killed.”
MEPI’s content analysis found that the media has been correctly reporting on a wave of violence of great proportions and premeditation. According to the stories, 80 percent of the crimes were committed with firearms and 20 percent of the victims were tortured before and after they were killed. Many of the bodies were found tied up and packed inside black garbage bags, a practice also favored by Mexican organized crime groups.
In March 2012, newspaper accounts described an escalation in the number of victims found decapitated or with their bodies cut to pieces. None of the stories, however, provided reasons as to why the new killing method was introduced in Honduras. A crime reporter told MEPI that the new killing methods could be tied to the Mexican organized crime group, Zetas, former military special forces-turned bandits, who built up a reputation for their brutality in killing opponents, and who have a presence in Central America. “About a year and half ago, bodies in plastic bags started appearing. The government won’t accept it is linked to the Zetas,” he said.
Like in Mexico, criminal groups also leave messages at the crime scenes. Some of the messages are carved out in the victims’ bodies. Other messages are scribbled by hand in cardboard signs that are placed next to the bodies. In 2012, several victims were found in both Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula with a hand or foot missing. The message was cryptic to the uninitiated. But a criminal investigator in El Salvador said that often those mutilations have specific meanings. A missing hand means the victim stole; a missing foot, he fled. Both are messages to the victim’s friends.
In Mexico, several media leaders were critical of the media when it published the messages left at crime scenes, and most newspapers and television news programs have stopped publishing or broadcasting them. The media agreed that they were becoming messengers in criminal groups’ vendettas. The Honduran press, however, continues to publish the messages.
More than 70 taxi and bus drivers were killed in 2012. They are the two top jobs and occupations that are high risk in Honduras today. But MEPI did not find any stories explaining to readers why these jobs have a higher probability of violence on the job. The stories also do not explain if the government has any program to improve security for workers in these occupations.
Similarly, five out of each 10 murders in the Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula in 2012 were carried out by men who rode as passengers in motorcycles, although there is a law prohibiting two riders in a motorbike.
The Press Confronts Violence
Why has superficial crime reporting that relies on bloody photos and spreads, gained some much ground in Honduras? Few journalists and analysts understand it. But MEPI’s content analysis and interviews with reporters and editors drew out multiple reasons: little access to timely official reports by the authorities, a lack of government-media implemented safety mechanisms to protect journalists, and fear of retaliation, if stories appear to have too much context and insight.
To elucidate the danger, one reporter told us, “A few years ago, in Tegucigalpa there was a bandit who was well known and was called The Black Cat. The man controlled all drug sales in Tegucigalpa. If any reporter identified him in a story, he would go to the news outlet and demand to know who wrote the story.”
Many newsrooms forbid their journalists from reporting in low income
neighborhoods controlled by violent youth gangs around San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, The media also shuns reporting trips to the departments of Olancho, Atlántida, Puerto Cortés and Colón, centers of drug trafficking activity—most stories related to these territories appear in news briefs. “It is difficult to report on crime in our country,” said one editor in Tegucigalpa. “Relatives of crime victims do not want to talk to the press. And for our safety, we don’t follow up crime stories.”
A debate on how to stop the media from using graphic pictures and reporting on crime has caused much discussion in Honduras. “(Their reporting style) is related to the lack of training,” said a member of the Honduran Human Rights Commission who did not want to give his name because he was not authorized to talk on the record. “They use bloody pictures to sell more newspapers. They don’t care.”
A poll conducted by DLA Consulting Group in March of this year backs this assumption. The survey found that four out of 10 persons polled said that they were left “in fear, nervous and concerned” after reading the Honduran press.
Business groups and civic leaders have also complained about the press and the reality they paint of Honduras in their stories. Early this year, the Mexican pollster Mitofsky rated President Lobo, number 18—next to the last place—in a poll that ranked 19 presidents across the world. Lobo’s approval rate is down to 27 percent of all Hondurans. Lobo capitalized on the debate over too much violence in the media. He proposed to regulate content in the media, and issue sanctions if a news outlet published news that were deemed to promote crime, obscenity and any other element that attempted against “morality and good manners.” The law proposal was strongly criticized by the Honduran media and international freedom of the press organizations. Media owners reacted quickly and in May, representatives of all mayor newspapers and broadcasters agreed on a self-regulation code of ethics that would forbid the news media from publishing photos and broadcasting video that promotes “immorality and violence.” The President still accuses the media of making a profit out of promoting violence.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Last july, body parts of a man which appeared to have been partially burnt, floated on a small lagoon near sugar cane fields in San Pedro Sula. It was the body of Aníbal Barrow, a television commentator who had been kidnapped by armed commandos two weeks earlier, with his family and a driver. The driver and family members had been freed earlier by the gunmen.
Barrow was a close friend of President Lobo and was the second journalist with known links to the President murdered violently in the last two years. In May 2012, police found the body of Ángel Alfredo Villatoro, also a television broadcaster who had been kidnapped two weeks earlier. His body was found dressed with a police special forces uniform. Nobody understood the uniform and the message. A few days before Villatoro was kidnapped, the police had taken away bodyguards that had been assigned to the reporter because of death threats.
Sound investigations on why reporters are getting killed have not been reached on any recent case. “We have examined some cases deeply but can never reach any conclusions,” said one editor. Part of the reason many journalists are afraid to dig too deep in the cases of their dead colleagues is because they fear that in these cases, as in others in Honduras today, the authors could come from political, journalistic or police sectors, who may be operating in tandem with members of organized crime.
Official Communiques
A reporter’s job is made more difficult because of a lack of government information that could explain the wave of violence. According to reporters and editors in both San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, the Coroner’s Office and local and national police agencies do not provide statistics or comprehensive reports. The lack of official information is due to various reasons. One is the alleged collusion between members of the government and police sectors with organized crime, as reported in the U.S. State Department’s Human Rights report as recently as last year.
But safety is also a concern for police officers and government officials. More than 120 police officers have been killed violently in the last three years, according to the Human Rights Office and police reports. Even top government officials run into trouble if they delve in too deep. In December 2009, six months after former President Zelaya was deposed, the then anti-drug Zar, Arístides González was gunned down in Tegucigalpa just days after he announced that the government was going to take measures against several clandestine landing strips it had discovered in the department of Olancho in northwestern Honduras. González had ordered an investigation of a group that was working with the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. The order to kill him was carried out by a local Honduran trafficker.
This article was originally published on 21 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
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08 Oct 13 | News and features, Politics and Society, The climate crisis, United Kingdom, United States
(Photo Illustration: Shutterstock)
The continuing advance of climate science, as reflected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recently released Fifth Assessment Report, points ever more strongly to the need for an expedited phase-out of carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Only a fundamental transformation of the current energy system during the coming decades may make it possible to avert disastrous impacts of global climatic disruption.
Carrying out such a transformation would be a political, economic, and technological challenge under the best of circumstances. But it is made especially difficult by corporate and ideologically driven opposition — most notably, by pressure from fossil fuel production interests to protect their strategic position and set the terms for government policymaking.
The United States and Canada exemplify the power of the dominant energy interests. The governments of both countries strongly support the expansion of domestic fossil energy extraction, production, and export. But the collision between climate science and energy politics, and threats to freedom of communication, are playing out differently in the two countries.
With the Harper government in Canada, for years we have witnessed an ongoing repression of climate and environmental science communication by government scientists, along with systematic cutbacks of environmental research and data collection. “Harper’s attack on science: No science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy“, an excellent review and discussion in the May 2013 issue of the Canadian journal Academic Matters, itemized a series of moves by the Harper government to control or prevent the free flow of scientific information across Canada, particularly when that information highlights the undesirable consequences of industrial development. The free flow of information is controlled in two ways: through the muzzling of scientists who might communicate scientific information, and through the elimination of research programs that might participate in the creation of scientific information or evidence.
It appears that the issues on which government scientists are subjected to the tightest political control of communications include climate change, the Alberta tar sands, the oil and gas industry, and Arctic wildlife. In other words, issues on which free communication of scientific evidence could pose problems for corporate energy development interests.
The situation in Canada has driven government scientists to hold public protest rallies twice in the last year. In September, rallies in major city centers and on university campuses were held across the country.
“It isn’t the way science is supposed to be. It’s not the way science used to be, the way I remember it in the federal government,” IPCC vice-chair and retired Environment Canada scientist John Stone told The Guardian.
So the Harper government can be said to be following in the footsteps — even surpassing — the record of the former Bush-Cheney administration in the U.S., whose alignment with energy industry interests led them to misrepresent climate science intelligence and impede forthright communication by federal climate scientists.
In the U.S., the Obama administration presents a complex picture that differs from Canada in significant ways, but also suggests the problematic nature of government support for expanded fossil energy extraction and production. The administration appears susceptible to industry pressure aimed at playing down the environmental and societal consequences of fossil energy resource extraction and use.
After several years of near-silence on climate change at the highest levels of U.S. political leadership, in June President Obama finally gave a major public address on climate change (the first by an American president) and laid out a multifaceted Climate Action Plan. The plan focuses on actions that can be taken by the White House and Executive Branch in the absence of action by a Congress that is tied in knots, largely subservient to corporate energy interests, and with much of the Republican Party aligned with the global warming denial machine.
Under Obama, we see a more straightforward acknowledgement of climate science and assessments by the most credible experts, and more straightforward communication on climate by federal research agencies. The forthcoming National Climate Assessment, scheduled for release next spring, will address the implications of climatic disruption for the U.S., across geographical regions and socioeconomic and resource sectors (public health, water resources, food production, coastal zones, and so forth). The importance of national assessments for public discourse was underscored when the Bush administration, in collusion with nongovernmental global warming denialists, suppressed official use of and references to the first National Climate Assessment, which had been completed in 2000.
Yet, despite the numerous constructive action items in Obama’s Climate Action Plan, there appears to be a contradiction at the heart of Obama’s policy, as indicated by the administration’s adoption of what they call an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy development. Obama points to increased U.S. fossil energy extraction as a major accomplishment. U.S. energy development includes ‘mountaintop removal’ coal mining in Appalachia, large-scale coal strip-mining on public lands in the West, and increased coal exports; deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, even in the wake of the BP oil blowout disaster in 2010, and quite possibly drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska; and a dramatic increase during the past five years in natural gas production using directional drilling technology and hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits that cover a number of large areas across the country.
Natural gas from ‘fracking’ appears to be an essential component of the administration’s climate policy, i.e., relying on the ongoing trend of substitution of natural gas for coal in power plants in order to meet a 2020 goal for reducing U.S. carbon emissions. The Department of the Interior has proposed to open 600 million acres of public land to fracking. But fracking is controversial, raising concerns about contamination of drinking water in affected areas by chemicals used in fracking, large-scale use of water in drilling, air pollution, leaking methane greenhouse gas emissions, and industrial degradation of rural landscapes. Environmental groups have protested at the White House, calling for a moratorium on fracking on public lands.
There are sIgns that the administration may be allowing political pressure from the natural gas industry to compromise investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency into fracking contamination incidents. The EPA has pulled back from several high-profile investigations in a manner that raises questions about whether this indicates a pattern of failure to act on scientific evidence. When the EPA’s scientists found evidence that fracking was contaminating water supplies, the EPA stopped or slowed down their work in in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming.
“Not only does this pattern of behavior leave impacted residents in the lurch, but it raises important questions as to whether the agency is caving to pressure from industry, antagonistic members of Congress and/or other outside sources,” Kate Sinding at the Natural Resources Defense Council notes. “This trend also calls into serious question the agency’s commitment to conducting an impartial, comprehensive assessment of the risks fracking presents to drinking water—a first-of-its-kind study that is now in its fourth year, with initial results now promised in 2014.” The EPA recently announced that it has delayed the expected final date of this study until 2016 — Obama’s eighth and final year in office. Meanwhile, industry continues to create a fait accompli of radically expanded fracking operations.
Obama has adopted a forward-looking position on climate change. But his ‘all of the above’ energy policy, and particularly his full-speed-ahead support for shale gas fracking, raises the question of whether politics is impeding freedom of communication by government experts — and whether the EPA is thereby being impeded in doing its job of protecting the public against the environmental dangers of fossil fuel development.
This article was originally published on 8 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
24 Sep 13 | Americas, Mexico, News and features
This September marks the anniversary of the murders of four Mexican journalists. Alejandro Zenón Fonseca Estrada, Norberto Miranda Madrid, Luis Carlos Santiago and Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro were each killed within a year of each other, from 2008 to 2011. They were all covering drug cartels and corruption, and not a single person has been brought to justice in these murder cases.
Alejandro Zenón Fonseca Estrada, 33, host of a popular morning call-in show called “El Padrino Fonseca” (The Godfather Fonseca) was gunned down on September 24, 2008, by unidentified men as he was hanging up anti-violence posters.
Norberto Miranda Madrid, 44, was a Web columnist and host for the online station Radio Visión. He was shot multiple times by two masked gunmen in the offices of the radio station on September 23, 2009.
Luis Carlos Santiago worked as a photographer with the local daily El Diario. On September 16, 2010, he was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen. He was 21.
Maria Elizabeth Macías Castro, 39, tweeted about activities of criminal groups and covered the topic on the website Nuevo Laredo en vivo (Nuevo Laredo Live) using the pen name “La NenaDLaredo” (The girl from Laredo). On September 24, 2011, her decapitated body was found with a note that identified the website and her pseudonym.
Speak Justice Now is a campaign against impunity by the Committee to Protect Journalists. We encourage you to join thousands around the world to tweet Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto today demanding an end to impunity using the hashtag #SpeakJusticeNow.
23 Sep 13 | News and features, Politics and Society, South Africa
Jacob Zuma (Photo: Jordi Matas / Demotix)
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has changed tack in its campaign to curtail the media. In a turn to what could be called “censorship lite”, the iron fist of state security intervention is being augmented by the velvet glove of calls for “patriotic” journalism.
After President Jacob Zuma’s ascendancy to the highest position in the ANC in 2007, various attacks have been launched on the private and public media. While factional battles for political control were being fought at the public broadcaster, an investigative journalist was illegally arrested after exposing corruption involving the newly appointed police commissioner. Despite concerted resistance across the social spectrum, the Protection of State Information Bill (dubbed the “Secrecy Bill”) was adopted, which will all but stop whistle blowing and investigate journalism into state corruption. And a media appeals tribunal has been mooted that could mete out punishments ranging from fines to jail time to media houses and individual journalists who offend politicians. While Zuma has referred the Secrecy Bill back to parliament for minor adjustments before signing it into law, the establishment of the tribunal is due to be considered by the country’s parliament, as per a policy decision of the ANC.
In recent times, individuals known to be close to Zuma and the ANC have gained greater influence in the media. This development seems to have precipitated a new softly-softly approach of edging the private media towards news reporting that is more amenable to dominant political interests. Zuma recently made a call for “patriotic journalism” which dovetails with a number of other initiatives by his allies in the media. The public broadcaster and two private media companies have all vowed to shift the media away from reporting on the “opposite of the positive”, as Zuma put it.
Zuma’s call was made in an off-the-cuff address at parliament. He told journalism students that, “When I go out, people envy South Africans, they wish they were South Africans because they say we are doing so well, we are succeeding… they love it. But when I am in South Africa, every morning you feel like you must leave this country because the reporting concentrates on the opposite of the positive.”
He asked the students: “Who do you think in reality you serve when reporting: the interest of the public that you claim, as the media you stand for, or the interest of the owners and managers of the paper? What is it that you think is happening, particularly in a country that is supposed to be an example with vibrant democracy, transparency, high morals, everything. How do we handle this?” Zuma expressed the hope that the South African media would learn from Mexico’s “patriotic journalism” which avoids reporting on crime and rather “markets” the country to foreigners.
His utterances follow a call by the acting chief operating officer of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Hlaudi Motsoeneng, that 70% of the public broadcaster’s news reports should be positive. He told the Mail and Guardian that, “we want to concentrate more on positive stories, rather than to put everything in a negative way. Before you become a manager at the SABC, you first have to be a citizen of this country. You should love this country… The message I put out very strongly at the SABC is to think about the positive when people go out and do stories. The difference is our own citizens are tired of crime and tired of people talking about negative things.” Motsoeneng is a known Zuma acolyte who has controversially held onto his post after being dismissed by the previous SABC board.
Meanwhile, businessman Iqbal Survé, who enjoys close ties with the ANC, became the new owner of Independent News & Media, which comprises the largest collection of English-language daily and weekly newspaper titles in the country. He explained part of the rationale for the purchase as being: “We felt the media was not representing the positive aspects of South Africa. What we are reading about is not what we see in South Africa.”
During this same period, Indian business associates and friends of the Zuma family launched ANN7, a new satellite news service. The Gupta family recently provoked outrage for using a military air base near South Africa’s capital Pretoria to fly in guests from India for a private wedding function. The former head of government communications, Jimmy Manyi, hosts a talk show on the channel. Manyi is no stranger to controversy, having spearheaded attacks against the media during his time as government spokesperson, such as using state advertising spending to put pressure on media outlets. In an interview about his new job as talk show host, he declared South Africans to be tired of negative press and that ANN7 will provide an alternative.
ANN7’s broadcasts have been riddled with more than the usual share of start-up problems, leading to much ridicule. The company also had to withdraw a billboard advertisement describing competitors as “old farts”, after a complaint from the South African Older Persons Forum. Postings of “ANN7 bloopers” on YouTube led to a copyright complaint from ANN7 and the removal of the clips, but they can still be viewed elsewhere.
The mirth that greeted ANN7 was also evident in responses to Zuma’s call, both in articles and tweets. More serious critiques included an article from Media Monitoring Africa, while others pointed out that Mexico has one of the worst press freedom records in the world.
Thus far, velvet glove of censorship lite has not succeeded in massaging the established private media into a more “patriotic” stance. This may change when the iron fist of criminalisation of critical journalism finally comes crashing down.
This article was originally posted on 23 Sept 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
