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Will
La Prensa of Panama Continue to Be a Role Model?
Will
La Prensa
in the future continue to be a model for other newspapers
in Latin America, or will it end up like newspapers such as
El Gráfico
of Guatemala, which lost credibility and closed after it was
used as a political organ when its publisher, Jorge Carpio,
ran unsuccessfully for the presidency?
By John Virtue
Since
baseball is the no. 1 sport in Panama, maybe it's appropriate
to liken what has happened to the newspaper La Prensa
with the apocryphal story of the small boy who approached
his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson, after the Chicago Black Sox
betting scandal of 1919 and said, "Say it ain't so, Joe."
Just as Jackson
was a hero to the small boy, La Prensa has been a hero
to me and my colleagues at the International Media Center
at Florida International University. At countless workshops,
La Prensa was one of a handful of newspapers - such
as El Norte and Reforma in Mexico and La
Nación in Costa Rica - that we held up as models
not just of excellent journalism but as examples of successful
businesses.
Now that role is
being questioned by the election March 31 of a new publisher,
Ricardo Alberto Arias, who in February persuaded the board
of directors not to extend the contract of La Prensa's
executive editor, Gustavo Gorriti. Under Gorriti, the newspaper
had unearthed corruption in the administration of former president
Ernesto Pérez Balladares, under whom Arias served as
foreign minister. Pérez Balladares tried unsuccessfully
in 1997 to kick Gorriti, a Peruvian citizen, out of the country.
Arias defended
his ouster of Gorriti in an interview with the Miami Herald.
"His work here was completed and his interest was in
Peru," he said. "He is an excellent journalist,
but with a lot of passion that is reflected in his work."
The firing of Gorriti
came at a time when Arias had talked of his aspirations to
seek the presidential candidacy of the Revolutionary Democratic
Party. Martin Torrijos, son of the late dictator, Omar Torrijos,
had considered Arias as his running mate for the party in
the 1999 presidential election. Arias' aspirations sparked
fears in the newsroom that, once he became publisher, he would
use the newspaper for political purposes. The issue was debated
on the Op-ed pages of La Prensa by employees and outsiders
alike.
"I do have
political ambitions, but if I had any chance of realizing
my hopes I would stay in the political field," Arias
was quoted as telling the Herald. "Instead, I have chosen
to return to La Prensa to help it overcome its problems."
Those problems are mainly the internal division caused by
the ouster of Gorriti and Arias' selection as publisher, according
to sources on the newspaper.
Hoping to pacify
those on the newspaper opposed to him, Arias told the meeting
that selected him to replace the retiring, publisher, Anabelle
de Rubinoff, that La Prensa would continue its investigations
of government corruption.
"That mission
requires a medium free of personalism and political partiality,
"he told the gathering. "We will maintain the principles
and values that oriented the foundation of a newspaper that
was truthful, objetive and open to all opinions."
Arias, son of former
president Ricardo Arias, was one of the founding members of
La Prensa in 1980. He served as its vice president
until 1994 when he joined Pérez Balladares'cabinet.
Founded to challenge
the dictatorship of Manuel Noriega, La Prensa is unlike
the vast majority of newspapers in Latin America inasmuch
as it has more than 1,200 shareholders, none of whom can hold
more than half a percentage of the total number of shares.
It was felt that this structure would prevent the newspaper
from being used for political purposes by any shareholder.
Employees are also shareholders.
Arias had accumulated
enough proxy votes for the publisher's post that he ran unopposed.
The newspaper has
been so committed to exposing corruption that one of its first
investigations after reopening in 1990, following the capture
of Noriega by the United States military, was of the Panamanian
news media itself.
Gorriti said in
his final message to the staff: "The fight against corruption,
that withers and mutilates the development of a nation, is
(Panama's) principal challenge."
Gorriti, who went
into exile after being arrested under the presidency of Alberto
Fujimori in Peru, joined La Prensa in 1996. He was
hired by the newspaper's then publisher, Johnny Arias, cousin
of Ricardo Alberto Arias. Johnny Arias warned at a shareholders
meeting March 22 that the board must maintain the independence
of the newspaper.
Ironically, had
Ricardo Alberto Arias merely waited, Gorriti would probably
have resigned on his own and returned to Peru, since Fujimori
had resigned the presidency and he himself had completed five
years on La Prensa. Speaking to the Sala de Prensa
Web site, Gorriti said of his ouster: "Although the maneuver
was plagued by irregularities, I decided not to fight it.
Perhaps [Arias] and his acolytes thought it was a successful
action, but for me it was anything but a surprise."
Roberto Eisenmann
Jr., the founding publisher of La Prensa, met Gorriti
at Harvard University in 1985 when both were Nieman fellows.
Writing in La Prensa, Eisenmann said: "The board
of directors should have learned that journalists of the caliber
of Gorriti don't write for a newspaper, nor for a country,
but for a larger universe." He added that Gorriti will
come out the winner, no matter what. "But Ricardo Alberto
and the board of directors lose by winning," he warned.
Will La Prensa
in the future continue to be a model for other newspapers
in Latin America, or will it end up like newspapers such as
El Gráfico of Guatemala, which lost credibility
and closed after it was used as a political organ when its
publisher, Jorge Carpio, ran unsuccessfully for the presidency?
"We'll have
to keep our fingers crossed," Eisenmann told Pulso
after Arias'selection. "I'm still very hopeful about
the future. But Ricardo Alberto will have to forget about
his political ambitions."
"Say it ain't
so, Ricardo Alberto."
John Virtue is publisher of Pulso del Periodismo
and deputy director of the International Media Center at Florida
International University, Miami
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