They also warned about legislative actions promoted by the Salta government. From the institution they expressed that “it is equally authoritarian for a government to try to qualify what is good or bad, true or false, in terms of communication and information.”
The Inter American Press Association (SIP) expressed concern about the legislative actions promoted by the Provincial governments of Salta and La Rioja to penalize the dissemination of false news and promote a constitutional reform that could affect freedom of expression and of the press.
In jump, a bill in the Chamber of Deputies punishes with arrest or fines “whoever spreads false news” in the digital spectrum. Article 50 of the initiative authorizes punishment for those who “create false news, instill panic, discredit people or provincial authorities”.
In The Riojaat the beginning of the debate on a constitutional reform of that province, Governor Ricardo Quintela said that the amendment will include the regulation of the independent press.
In his opinion, the reforming Convention -with a large pro-government majority- must discuss the “free speech and governance”. The president is critical of the media and, months ago, had proposed “blocking” the national media because, he said, “they give rotten information” that cannot be “verified.”
The president of the IAPA, Michael Greenspon, expressed his concern about these initiatives and regretted that “in a country with so much history and jurisprudence on freedom of expression, in which the national Constitution safeguards freedom of the press, they return ghosts of the past to try to handcuff the media and gag the freedom of expression of citizens“.
Greenspon, global director of Printing Licensing and Innovation for The New York Times, recalled the statements by Chapultepec and Salta, the latter sanctioned precisely in the Argentine province that is now promoting the controversial law.
Those documents enshrine the principles that should govern freedom of the press and ask governments to refrain from creating laws or regulations that have a negative impact on the natural right to freedom of expression.
The president of the IAPA Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Carlos Jornet, stressed that the new legislative proposal being discussed in Salta is ambiguous and dangerous.
“It seems that the officials disguise a laudable action to limit lies in the creation of a protective shield to block criticismthe opinions and the journalistic investigations that have them as recipients,” he warned.
Jornet, journalistic director of the Argentine newspaper La Voz del Interior, stressed that “it is equally authoritarian for a government to try to qualify what is good or bad, true or false, in terms of communication and information.”
Greenspon and Jornet indicated that to combat misinformation, Governments should promote public policies for news and digital literacy and measures that strengthen professional journalism and refrain from imposing censorship mechanisms or criminal sanctions.
They also recalled that the IAPA “rejects laws or regulations that affect the independence and editorial criteria of the media and journalists.”
The Miami-based IAPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending and promoting freedom of the press and expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 publications from the Western Hemisphere.
