The lower house in Argentina approved new media legislation this week that “aimed at reining in media conglomerates and bolstering government discretion over TV and radio licensing.” The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Moffett reports on the matter, saying the Senate will now take up the bill, which, if passed, could curb the power of one President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s most powerful critics: the media group Clarín. Besides owning Argentina’s popular daily by the same name, Clarín also has interests in television and radio broadcasting. The bill has divided pro government and opposition legislators in Argentina. Indeed, nearly 100 lawmakers walked out of debate over the bill before a vote in the lower chamber in protest over numerous late changes to the text of the legislation (afterwards, the measure was approved in a 146-3 vote). Analysts are predicting an even more contentious debate in the Senate but many ultimately expect the bill to be approved. Interestingly, a majority of lawmakers agree the current media law must be revised, says the WSJ, as the current legislation was written in 1980, under Argentina’s last military junta. But critics contend the process has been moving forward with too little debate and has been politicized due to the Kirchners’ own battle with Clarín. The two had a falling out last year during protests that pitted farmers against the government over an export tax that the president had advocated.
The AP reports that press freedom in the region is also top on the agenda as newspaper executives meet in Caracas for meetings of the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association. The country who will receive the most attention is host Venezuela, says the wire service, where 32 radio stations and two small television networks were taken off the air last month. The AP says the government has also announced it plans to take some 29 other radio stations off the airwaves soon as well. “Our single largest preoccupation, I think, at IAPA is the move by President Chavez in Venezuela, also followed very closely by President (Rafael) Correa in Ecuador, to slowly but steadily transform a free and independent media into independent media under constant attack and harassment,” says Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News and president of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information. Expected to speak at the forum are former Bolivian president Carlos Mesa and former Peruvian head of state, Alejandro Toledo (who is also a new hire at Brookings, it turns out.).
Also from Venezuela, there was a new announcement from President Hugo Chavez yesterday, declaring that the country is considering allowing the Venezuelan air force to shoot down suspected drug trafficker airplanes in the country’s air space. However, writes the AP, Chavez “is not yet convinced it is a good idea.” “We are studying it. This is something tough. There are countries that have it: authorization to shoot down planes,” Chavez said. “I don't like the idea, but I'm thinking about it.” As reported earlier, Venezuela, along with Bolivia (and Burma) was recently decertified for the second straight year for “failures” in its counternarcotics efforts, according to the U.S. State Dept.
In other news this morning, the Government Accountability Office released a report on U.S. border security Thursday, citing numerous failures in the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to implement fences and other border security measures. DHS responded by saying they did not challenge the report’s findings, writes the New York Times, adding they were as frustrated as anyone else about the slow-going process. Also, the New York Times “Lens” blog looks at a new book on Venezuela by photojournalist Christopher Anderson, entitled “Capitolio.” Simon Romero writes that it “offers a stunning view into Caracas’s descent from its perch as one of Latin America’s most economically advanced, if unequal, cities into a place gripped by low-intensity chaos and fear.” Romero goes on: “The book’s name refers to a domed government building like one here in the old center built by Antonio Guzmán Blanco, a 19th-century despot. Capitolio, Mr. Anderson said, is also a metaphor for an oil country’s export of revolution even as its capital, Caracas, rots from within.”
The NYT also has an AP brief on discussions between U.S. and Cuban officials in Havana over the restarting of direct mail service between the two countries. Bisa Williams, deputy asst. secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, led the U.S. team of diplomats in what was the first arrival of U.S. diplomats to Havana for such talks since 2002. The AP also writes that Amnesty International has declared that an indigenous market vendor in Mexico, recently released from prison after spending three years in prison for a kidnapping she did not commit, deserves government compensation. “Nothing will replace the three years she lost, but it is vital that those responsible for this injustice be brought before justice, and that she receive an appropriate compensation,” says Kerrie Howard, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Americas. And, perhaps responding to new doubts in the U.S. over his role in the DAS domestic spying scandal reported in yesterday’s NYT, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said Thursday he is in favor of eliminating the agency all together and giving its primary functions to the country’s police. Previously, Uribe had insisted DAS only needed a restructuring.
Finally, a couple notes from Honduras. The country’s newspaper El Tiempo reports that de factor leader Roberto Micheletti has had it with the mediation of Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias. On Thursday, Micheletti declared Arias has “stopped being the right mediator” for the crisis. The fiery leader also added once again that nobody can stop the electoral process in the country from proceeding forward. “It’s not only [Mr. Arias’s] his attitude, but it is that he has expressed that attitude in such a way that one day he comes out saying we must hold elections and the next he says no…” Meanwhile, the AP, in its reporting of Mr. Arias’s meetings with many of the contenders in Honduras’s November elections earlier in the week, emphasizes the hesitant nature of the candidates’ support for the Arias process. In particular, the AP notes strong criticism from many of the candidates, save the left leaning Cesar Ham, for tougher sanctions being imposed by the U.S. and also says these men seemed to be less than supportive of ousted President Mel Zelaya.
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