MEDIA-CHILE: Protesting Threats to Freedom of Speech

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Dec 22 2003 (IPS) - Dressed in black and with their mouths gagged, a group of young journalists gathered Monday outside Chile’s lower house of Congress to protest recent developments that activists say are threatening freedom of speech in this South American nation.

The Santiago appeals court, meanwhile, confirmed Monday that a trial would go ahead against several journalists for broadcasting a private conversation filmed by a hidden camera.

The reporters outside Congress were protesting the Dec. 9 approval by the Chamber of Deputies of a controversial privacy bill that would obstruct the public’s right to be informed.

The centre-left coalition government of Ricardo Lagos has promised to introduce in-depth modifications of the bill before it goes to the Senate, which should begin to debate it next May.

The bill was approved by the lower house two days before the arrest of Alejandro Guillier, one of the journalists facing trial.

Guillier, who works for the TV station Chilevisión, was arrested on Dec. 11. He and four other journalists, including the TV station’s manager, are facing prosecution for airing a conversation with a judge that was surreptitiously filmed.

”Alejandro Guillier’s arrest was the culmination of a ‘black year’ for freedom of expression” in Chile, reporter Luis Conejeros, one of those who organised Monday’s protest, told IPS.

Conejeros also pointed to a legal ruling that blocked Channel 13’s programme ”Enigma” from broadcasting a report on an unresolved murder, as well as a court order to seize copies of ”Life in Flames”, an unauthorised biography of singer Cecilia Pantoja, written by journalist Cristóbal Peña, which alludes to the artist’s alleged lesbian tendencies.

”The restrictive legal framework demonstrates that censorship still reigns in Chile,” said Conejeros. ”Even worse, it could be strengthened to the point of suffocating the free exercise of the journalistic profession and the right to be informed in a pluralistic, timely and truthful manner.”

The case against Chilevisión arose when the station broadcast a conversation filmed with a hidden camera, in which Judge Daniel Calvo, who at the time was handling the investigation into a paedophilia ring, admitted that he frequently visited a sauna that is a meeting-point for gays.

The case against the Chilevisión journalists is based on a 1995 reform of the penal code that was sponsored by a right-wing lawmaker, then-senator Miguel Otero. The reform prohibits all surreptitious recording or filming of private conversations, now punishable by up to five years in prison.

Guillermo Torres, the president of the Journalists’ Association, noted in a conversation with IPS that this is the first time that the so-called ”Otero Law” has been applied.

He described the Otero Law as a ”legal aberration”, and pointed out that the Lagos administration had committed itself to getting it revoked.

With that aim, the government submitted the bill on ”civil protection of privacy”, better known as the ”privacy law”.

But the Chamber of Deputies’ modifications of that bill have led to fears that the remedy could be worse than the illness.

Parliamentary Deputy Esteban Valenzuela of the co-governing Party For Democracy – who is himself a journalist – was the only lawmaker to abstain from voting on Dec. 9, when 89 of his fellow deputies passed the controversial ”privacy law”.

”The only mea culpa that the government can make in this matter is that (the deputies) totally overhauled the bill we submitted” to Congress, said a visibly annoyed President Lagos at a Dec. 15 breakfast meeting with foreign correspondents.

While the government’s version of the bill put an emphasis on the public interest and the public’s right to keep a close watch on the work of public functionaries and elected officials, the text as modified by the lower house focuses mainly on protection of privacy.

The modified version of the bill would subject media found guilty of ”illegitimate interference” in a person’s privacy to fines and possible criminal prosecution.

”Illegitimate interference” would include revealing details about the private lives of public figures or their families; using concealed tape-recorders, videocams, or cameras to capture private conversations or events; publishing letters, memoirs and private writings without authorisation; and publishing unauthorised photographs of public figures other than during public events or in public places.

According to a Dec. 10 press release issued by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, ”The vote reverses an encouraging legislative trend toward greater protection for freedom of expression in Chile.”

”Just when Chile was beginning to relax its tight controls on free expression, the country’s politicians have gotten cold feet,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

The communique stated that ”The bill goes far beyond what is necessary to address valid privacy concerns. Most importantly, the bill contemplates no exception to media liability where there is a strong public interest in the information. Media that use material considered private – even if to unmask criminal activities or corruption by public officials – could be penalised by crippling awards of damages.”

The media complain that if the new bill is passed into law, public offices will become places of secrecy, where journalists will not be able to carry out coverage without the authorisation of a cabinet minister, judge or other official.

Under the privacy law, those who feel that their dignity or honour has been affected by ”illegitimate interference” would be able to sue. Those found guilty of making recordings or taking photos without the individual’s consent could spend up to 61 days in prison, and the media outlet in question could be fined up to 23,000 dollars.

If the bill becomes law, businessman Claudio Spiniak, who was allegedly at the centre of a child sex network in which several parliamentarians have been implicated, would be able to take legal action against Channel 13, which broadcast the images of his arrest that according to the National Television Council were ”sensationalist” and ”demeaning”.

Judge Calvo would also be able to sue, because the National Television Council and the Media Ethics Council took measures to punish Chilevisión for using a hidden camera to tape a conversation in which he admitted to his homosexual tendencies, which led to his removal from the paedophilia case.

However, the Ethics Tribunal of the Journalists’ Association Metropolitan Council absolved Guillier on the grounds that he used surreptitious means of recording for ”a higher end and in the public interest,” because his action led to the removal of a judge at risk of being manipulated or blackmailed by the child sex ring that he was investigating.

”We believe freedom of the press and freedom of expression have the same value as honour and the individual’s right to privacy,” Lidia Baltra, chair of the Journalists’ Association’s National Tribunal of Ethics, commented to IPS.

”Ethics specifically involves the collision between these two rights, which are equally valuable, and must be preserved in society, because they are both human rights,” said Baltra.

Sociologist Eduardo Tironi, secretary of communication and culture under the government of Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994), said that there has been a healthy process of opening up of Chilean society, which has included growing media scrutiny of those who hold public posts.

”The press has been the ‘smeller out of secrets’ in this process of liberalisation,” wrote Tironi in an article published last week by the local newspaper El Mercurio’s weekend publication El Sábado.

The media’s errors should not lead to growing restrictions, like the privacy law, he argued. ”Just as there is no perfect market,” there is no ”perfect press,” and ”in both cases, the goal of perfect good manners can be more costly than accepting mistakes.”