(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 3 November 2005 IAPA press release: IAPA delivers recommendations on press freedom to Argentine legislators BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (November 3, 2005) – A bill on access to public records was strongly criticized during an Inter American Press Association (IAPA) conference between journalists and Argentine legislators here today. A number […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 3 November 2005 IAPA press release:
IAPA delivers recommendations on press freedom to Argentine legislators
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (November 3, 2005) – A bill on access to public records was strongly criticized during an Inter American Press Association (IAPA) conference between journalists and Argentine legislators here today.
A number of legislators charged that the bill was being bogged down in Congress by “perverse” amendments introduced in the Senate following its passage in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, in 2003.
At a private breakfast meeting with a group of legislators from various parties, the IAPA delivered a series of recommendations (see at end) on access to public information and on decriminalization of libel. Both issues were discussed the previous day at a forum in which prominent constitutionalist lawyers and Argentine jurists, as well as journalists, took part.
IAPA President Diana Daniels, of The Washington Post Company, Washington, D.C., said that with regard to access to public records in Argentina “the biggest challenge is yet to come,” whether or not a law was enacted.
Daniels explained that there would be an “education stage and with it a change in the culture of confidentiality, the implementation of a uniform system of information gathering, and the education of public officials and citizens in the use of this tool.”
Gustavo Vittori, president of the Argentine News Companies Association (ADEPA), added his voice to the criticism of the “bogging down” of the bill, saying that “it is noteworthy that a proposal for access to information has so many obstacles – there should be no problem when it is a matter of improving the institutional quality of Argentine democracy.”
He added that if the law was enacted “the first to benefit from it would be the politicians, because they would gain in transparency and in trust and credibility.”
The reading of the recommendations that were delivered to the legislators during the breakfast meeting with IAPA officers was conducted by Sergio Muñoz, of the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, who is the co-chairman of the IAPA’s Chapultepec Committee.
Raúl Kraiselburd, editor of El Día of La Plata, Argentina, and a former IAPA president, was the moderator of a panel discussion to which opposition legislators were invited but failed to attend.
Kraiselburd reiterated that an access to information law was not to grant a special privilege to journalists. “The IAPA defends the right of all human beings to receive, seek and impart information,” he said.
Ernesto Ricardo Sanz, national senator for Mendoza province for the opposition Radical Civic Union (UCR) party, described the bill on access to public information as being “bogged down” in the legislature. He explained that the bill had been passed by the Chamber of Deputies in 2003 but was sidetracked in the Senate, especially by the opposition to it of Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of the Argentine president.
Sanz called this manoeuvre “a perverse action” that was due to the governing party using a November 2004 amendment to move against the news media and the practice of journalism.
Margarita R. Stolbizer, the UCR national representative for Buenos Aires province, said that what was important was “to understand that an access to information law is a tool that serves to grant equality to citizens and implies the right to participate” and that it was akin to education in that “information and education are both equalizing elements.”
Stolbizer added that information enables control by the people, “an important point in Argentina to give the government greater transparency and combat corruption.”
Roberto Rock, editor of the Mexico City, Mexico, newspaper El Universal, said that it was fundamental that this kind of law create a regulatory entity to ensure its effective implementation and educate both public officials and citizens on how to proceed with requests. He noted that 12 countries, among them Mexico, of the 68 in the world that have access to information laws have regulatory bodies.
Rock added, “This law is not now in Congress or in the media, it is in the hands of the people” and its passage would influence other Latin American countries currently discussing similar ones – as in Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and others.
For further information, see: http://www.sipiapa.com/pressreleases/chronologicaldetail.cfm?PressReleaseID=1515 and http://www.sipiapa.com/pressreleases/chronologicaldetail.cfm?PressReleaseID=1512
