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The Role of Media in Improving Democratic Governance
Under this model, a third of the institutions necessary to efficiently
govern a country are directly related to the media. In the Latin American
historical context, where governments and regimes have been marked
by corruption and abuses, the media carries an even greater value as
a natural counterweight to the excesses of power. Silvio Waisbord,
then assistant professor at the Journalism and Public Information
Department at Rutgers University in New Jersey, stated:
“As in other regions of the world, the main value of
investigative journalism for Latin American democracies
is that it contributes to increasing political accountability.
This is particularly important considering that the
weakness of accountability mechanisms has been
identified as one of the most serious problems that the
democracies in the region are confronting. Institutional
lethargy, ineffectiveness, and lack of responsiveness to
legitimate public needs have often been cited as major
weaknesses.”
6
Unfortunately, in the spectrum of Latin American countries, this
governance formula is also frequently altered, as in Brazil where
journalists have faced legal charges of “offending the honor” and
“invasion of privacy” for having singled out officials and politicians
in the local press for alleged acts of corruption.
7
In Ecuador and
Venezuela, it is the presidents themselves who direct insults towards
media that is critical of government acts. In Bolivia, an ambiguous law
was enacted which favors censorship.
8
In Argentina, the government
has direct confrontations with the main newspapers of the country.
In Nicaragua, the discretionary allocation of official publicity and
the infusion of public resources into media outlets friendly to the
government are common, while at the same time more stringent
guidelines are enforced on organizations critical of the administration.
In places such as Mexico and Colombia, the relationship between
government and media is broken because officials cannot guarantee
minimal security conditions for journalists to perform their jobs
