Foreign journalists face risks

Posted on Fri, Jun. 16, 2006

FORT LAUDERDALE CONVENTION
Foreign journalists face risks
Journalists from Cuba, Mexico and Colombia talked Thursday about the
dangers of reporting the truth in their countries.
BY DARRAN SIMON
dsimon@MiamiHerald.com

Colombian documentary filmmaker Hollman Morris called on the country's
president, Alvaro Uribe, to denounce violence against journalists.

''All that we do is try to find the truth,'' Morris told about 60 people
gathered to hear him speak on a panel Thursday sponsored by the National
Association of Hispanic Journalists, which is holding its convention
this week in Fort Lauderdale.

The program, called Threats, Jail, Death and Silence, was moderated by
Nancy San Martin of The Miami Herald. Panelists included an exiled Cuban
journalist and the publisher of a Mexican daily newspaper recently
attacked by gunmen.

Worldwide, 47 journalists were killed in 2005 while doing their jobs,
according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), one of the
highest death tolls in the past decade.

And in 2005, 125 journalists were imprisoned, CPJ figures show.

Four of Manuel Vásquez Portal's colleagues have been in a Cuban prison
sine 2003.

''It's the government that represses, that incarcerates, that hits the
journalists,'' said Portal, an exiled Cuban journalist whose news agency
in Cuba is now defunct.

Colombia is one of the ''most dangerous places for journalism,'' with 28
journalists killed in the past decade, said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's
Americas program coordinator.

Lauría said the number of journalists killed in Colombia has decreased
-- but only because journalists who fear retribution have taken to
tempering controversial or potentially inflammatory details from their
stories or not reporting on an issue.

But panelists say self censorship cheats citizens out of learning the
truth about their government leaders.

In February, gunmen fired assault rifles and tossed grenades at El
Mañana, a newspaper in the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, just over the
border from Texas.

One reporter was shot four times in the evening attack, said Ramón Cantú
Deandar, publisher of El Mañana.

Lauría of the CPJ said the governments in Colombia and Mexico need to
conduct thorough investigations when journalists are killed, ``so they
can break the cycle of impunity.''

Mexican president Vicente Fox's decision to name a special prosecutor to
investigate crimes againsts journalists after the newspaper attack is a
positive sign, he said.

Since the attack, Cantú Deandar said the paper has increased the number
of security cameras at the offices. The newspaper has maintained its
caution when reporting police news, staying clear of news connected to
members of the drug cartels, he said.

''They wanted to scare us and they did,'' said Cantú Deandar.

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