MEDIA-PERU: Anti-Corruption Crusaders Take a Look at TV

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Oct 30 2001 (IPS) - The efforts to uproot political corruption in Peru, which affected even the media during the government of Alberto Fujimori, have triggered heated debate on how to guarantee democratic values in the media without affecting freedom of the press.

The legislators who removed Fujimori (1990-2000) from office last year on the grounds that he was “morally unfit to govern” are now taking aim at one of his chief instruments of power – his government’s influence over TV stations, which was exercised by means of bribery and extortion.

“What happened under the Fujimori regime confirms that broadcast TV is too powerful to be left in the hands of private business interests that no one has elected, and that have no institutional responsibility towards society and the state,” said analyst Mirko Lauer with the Lima daily La República.

A parliamentary commission made up of representatives of Peru’s five main political parties has been given a late January deadline for drafting suggested guidelines aimed at guaranteeing that the media are managed in accordance with democratic values.

According to the legislative and judicial investigations carried out since Fujimori was impeached and took refuge in Japan, his administration spent around 30 million dollars between 1998 and 2000 securing the support of several newspapers and six private broadcast TV channels in Lima.

The illegal efforts to ensure media backing for Fujimori’s re- election last year were directly carried out by former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who has been under arrest in a naval prison since his capture last June in Venezuela, where he had escaped to in December.

Before the investigations were launched, it was believed that the operation aimed at clinching media support was engineered by Fujimori himself to guarantee endorsement from the press and TV for his re- election campaign.

But evidence that later turned up indicated that Montesinos was hatching an alternative plot, which would involve overthrowing Fujimori and placing then-economy minister Carlos Boloña in power.

“That explains why (Montesinos) paid 10 million dollars to the chief shareholder of Channel 5, the country’s leading TV station – an extraordinary sum that baffled everyone,” said Alberto Panessi, a sociologist at the Catholic University.

“But that sum no longer looks disproportionate if you consider that Montesinos was pinning down support for a more daring venture: the ousting of Fujimori and his replacement by Boloña, who had even drafted already the inaugural speech for his frustrated attempt to become president,” added Panessi.

In order to blackmail and gain power over those he corrupted, Montesinos filmed and taped his meetings with political leaders, journalists, judges and members of the military, including scenes in which money changed hands.

The videos, which feature TV executives accepting fat wads of money or negotiating legal favours, shook public opinion and prepared people to accept even the most drastic new laws on the media.

However, the issue has sparked loud debate, with some political sectors demanding the revocation of the broadcasting licences of TV stations implicated in corruption scandals, while others are concerned with guaranteeing that the new laws do not compromise freedom of the press and speech.

“If you want to build a democratic society, liberty and pluralism must be guaranteed, especially on TV, because today the version broadcast on TV becomes the socially accepted truth,” said former presidential candidate Lourdes Flores.

Lawmaker Javier Diez Canseco of the leftist Decentralist Parliamentary Union said the “democratic ethics” of TV stations should be overseen by means of periodic reviews of their licences.

“TV uses electromagnetic frequencies that belong to the state, and which should not be granted indefinitely, because that converts them into the property of business interests. A system of temporary licences would allow those who compromise democratic values to be sanctioned,” he argued.

Diez Canseco added that “concessions granted for an unlimited period of time are equivalent to a total lack of control, which is why the executives who have been discovered happily became buddies of the dictatorship” – a reference to the Fujimori regime.

“The main issue is how to make sure that ‘accepting bribes’ does not become one of the rights of business executives in the future,” he said.

However, adopting a system of renewable broadcasting licences would raise the question of who would be in charge of assessing whether ethical guidelines were respected – a responsibility that none of those engaged in the debate believes should be put in the hands of the state.

Journalist Ismael Frías suggested the immediate cancellation of all of the licences currently held by broadcast TV channels, “due to the feeling of national indignity.” They should be turned over, he said, to cooperatives made up of the stations’ reporters and other employees.

Frías cited the example of the birth of the French daily Le Monde, which became a cooperative in 1945 when General Charles de Gaulle expropriated the newspaper Les Temps in reprisal for its support for the German occupying forces during World War II.

Rodrigo Montoya, a sociologist at the University of San Marcos, suggested that after the current licences were cancelled, the two main channels should be turned over to one state and one private university, in order for them to compete for ratings.

Reporter Fernando Vivas, who writes for the political weekly Caretas, proposed the creation of a “national TV council” that would be comprised of representatives of non-governmental organisations, the National Council of University Rectors, the bar association and other social sectors.

But objections to that proposal were raised by leaders of a number of political factions, including Flores, a christian democrat.

“The remedy could be worse than the disease, because concentrating direct or indirect control of the media in one entity, whether governmental or non-governmental, would become anti-democratic,” she said.

A similar view was expressed by Enrique Zileri, director of Caretas and president of the Council of the Peruvian Press, who warned of the risks posed by the current political context, in which tempers are running high and the anti-corruption probes have been likened to a witch-hunt.

“Excessive regulation can be dangerous. The laws that are passed must be stable and, above all, must guarantee freedom of expression and not contain mechanisms that could shackle it in the future,” he said.