Uruguay’s Supreme Court announced in October that it would support the formation of a Roundtable for the Safety of Journalists in the country. The announcement came amid an uptick in isolated cases of aggression against the media.
The proposal was made by the Uruguayan Press Association (APU) at a celebration of the “Day of the Journalist and Media Worker,” which coincided with APU’s 80th anniversary, at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo. The roundtable aims to “strengthen peace, democracy and sustainable development,” and has also been endorsed by UNESCO, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Attorney General’s Office.
Dr. John Pérez Brignani, the Minister of the Supreme Court of Justice, who was present at the celebration, declared, “It is essential that journalists come together and work to defend freedom of expression and to defend their own safety, which is essential for the Democratic State of Law.”
Álvaro Pan Cruz, director of APU and President of the Federation of Journalists of Latin America and the Caribbean (FEPALC) explained in an interview with Latin America Reports that the roundtable was proposed after APU noticed a rise in attacks against journalists over recent years. These attacks took on various forms, including the ridicule, following, and threatening of journalists.
While Pan acknowledged that these incidents appear to be “isolated,” he explained, “We do not want this to continue escalating and taking on other dimensions,” citing Paraguay as an example. He explained that, in Paraguay, isolated incidents of aggressions against journalists escalated and became more widespread, until the situation had adopted “such a degree of gravity that it was very difficult to reverse it.” This led to the establishment of a roundtable similar to that of Uruguay’s.
The Uruguayan roundtable is still in the process of establishing the explicit measures it is going to take, which it will seek to implement after the second round of elections concludes later this month. For now, Pan explained, APU has “laid the cornerstone” of the roundtable which seeks to be “multidisciplinary” and to represent “multiple actors.”
Between May 2023 and May 2024, the number of attacks and aggressions against journalists in Uruguay doubled: something Pan says has multiple causes. He identified the treatment of the media by President Luis Lacalle Pou’s government as one contributing factor, recalling that during the COVID-19 pandemic, “This government held regular press conferences, and the way to access that conference was not to arrive, enter, and participate. Instead, there was a selection [of journalists] which entered each time. Not everybody entered, not everybody asked questions.” Pan described this as “a way to subtly curtail journalistic work.”
Pan also argued that collaborations between large media outlets and large corporations may have contributed to increased hostility towards journalists. “The media law favors a certain concentration in a few hands,” he said, adding, “Increasingly, large media outlets are not journalistic companies per se, but rather they respond to corporations that suddenly dedicate themselves to other topics.”
Discussing the importance of protecting Uruguay’s democratic values, Pan referred to the conditions in which Uruguay’s 1973-1985 dictatorship arose. He explained that the dictatorship was carried out “in collusion with politicians belonging to the traditional parties.” He emphasized that the dictatorship is referred to as the “civic-military dictatorship” in Uruguay, because of the complicity of both parties.
Therefore, while Pan believes that the outside perspective of Uruguay as a country where democracy and freedom of speech are protected is “well earned” due to the country’s “defense of values,” he explained that the roundtable has been introduced “because there are some indications that this democracy, that this respect for institutions, is being undermined.”
Pan concluded, “If we want to continue to be seen as a strong democracy with respect for institutions and independent journalism, then we need to work towards that.”
