Independent journalists are becoming an endangered species in Honduras, as the government and ruling party unleash an unprecedented attack on reporters and editors who want to tell the truth.

According to an April report from Santiago Canton, the Organization of American States’ relator especial para la libertad de expresion, journalists in Honduras are “suffering from judicial persecution, threats and aggression as a result of the exercise of their profession.” Other recent reports from several international organizations have demonstrated similar concern.

Such international criticism, however, has not encouraged soul-searching among Honduran media owners; it’s provoked a witch hunt for culprits. Even foreign reporters are not immune. One international reporter who filed a wire service story on the controversy was visited at his home late one night by two government agents who demanded to see his “article critical of the president.”

According to Victor Meza, a political analyst at the Centro de Documentacion de Honduras, during the 1980s the Honduran press played “an important role in the democratic transition,” but by the 1990s much of the press began to be a “factor that retarded the growth of a democratic culture.”

Meza refers to a large sector of the Honduran press as “the bought-off press,” and said many reporters are “direct heirs of the military impunity” of past decades.

He said the situation worsened following Hurricane Mitch, when civil society groups began to question and criticize government reconstruction plans. “The government reacted in a totally unexpected way, ordering a pack of paid-off journalists to insult the organizations of civil society, in order to disqualify them, offend them, defame them,” Meza said. “The press was putting at risk the evolution of a democratic political culture.”

Berta Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared, claims much of the problem originates with President Carlos Flores, who is also owner of the country’s largest newspaper. “That man doesn't accept criticism, he just wants people who will adore him,” Oliva said.

According to several sources, the president micromanages the country’s press, rising early in the morning to call the country’s two major radio news programs where he approves–or vetoes–the morning’s headlines. According to the OAS report, if Flores reads an article critical of his government’s performance, he sends it to the media owner as a warning.

Following the release of the Canton report, the president reportedly called a meeting of media owners to discuss retaliation against journalists who had testified before the OAS envoy. When one media owner said he couldn’t fire a reporter because he couldn’t pay pension and other costs, Flores reportedly said his office would cover it.

According to Manuel Torres, a veteran journalist who until recently coordinated the editorial pages for the daily El Heraldo, the government exercises control over journalists by “giving dozens of family members jobs as diplomats or other government officials.” In some cases, Torres reports, working journalists are given well-paid posts as consultants to government ministries, even though they may never have to show up at the office. According to Meza, the motto of many journalists has become “I can't be bought or sold, but I can be rented.”

Media that repeat the official line get lucrative ads from government agencies, those that don’t are treated as pariahs by public relations firms. And in some cases, it’s plain old bribery; Oliva says the National Autonomous University wrote checks to several journalists during a recent strike in order to ensure proper coverage. A reporter who uncovered the checks was not allowed to publish the story in a Tegucigalpa newspaper.

As a result, self-censorship reigns. “I’ll give a prize to whoever can find an editorial that criticizes the president,” Torres said.

According to Carlos Chamorro, a Nicaraguan journalist who recently completed a study of Central American media and processes of democratization, these problems of corruption and government pressure are common throughout the region. Yet while in neighboring countries, Chamorro reports, “the limitations of the media tend to show up in electoral campaigns or other stressful times, in Honduras the media are permanently acting as an instrument of pressure groups, with few exceptions.”

Flores refuses to acknowledge any interference in the press, claiming Hondurans enjoy an “unrestricted and guaranteed freedom of the press.” In a May speech to the Journalists Association, he said, “Honduras today has advanced beyond mere freedom of the press, by consecrating, guaranteeing, and protecting the freedom of thought.”

Yet an environment persists where criticizing the president is consider treasonous. “If you criticize Flores, you’re criticizing the state, and that constitutes an act of treason against the homeland,” said Mel Zelaya, a former Flores cabinet minister.

“I feel like we’re back in the cold war,” said Oliva.

The latest victims in the war on the press include Torres, who was fired by El Heraldo on May 8, and the newspaper’s editor, Thelma Mejia, who on April 30 was forced to resign by the paper’s owner, a ruling party activist. According to Mejia, she and Torres were accused of being “spies from civil society.” During the three years that Torres and Mejia worked at El Heraldo, the paper had become the principal space for civil society to articulate its concerns.

Shortly before their dismissal, several prominent academic and rights activists drafted a public letter to the country’s media owners, detailing a long list of abuses and declaring themselves on “permanent alert” and promising to closely monitor freedom of the press. The group reminded media owners that their business “is substantially different from a business that sells products or services, due to the social function you carry out and the role that you play in creating an informed citizenry, something that’s an indispensable prerequisite for the construction of democracy.”

Most Hondurans never saw the statement, however, as only one newspaper agreed to accept it as a paid advertisement. Yet when the owners group, the Communications Media Association, published a response a week later, every paper and radio and television station gave it prominent coverage. The statement accused “this group of cold war left-overs” with “orquestrating defamation campaigns from inside the country aimed at the outside world.” The owners accused their critics of “disaccrediting the nation so that inside the people lose hope and that outside the international community doubts whether they should give us the assistance that they have been generously giving towards our recuperation.”

While several journalists have been fired in the recent campaign against independence, others have suffered worse consequences. Julio Pineda, the news director of the Jesuit-run Radio Progreso, received threats early in 2000 from transport owners upset with his coverage of a fare increase, as well from the Honduran physician’s association for his positive coverage of Cuban doctors working in Honduras.

On April 26, 2000, Pineda was shot in the head by an assailant riding a motorcycle. No one was ever arrested. According to Ricardo Falla, a Jesuit involved in the
station’s operations, “Al periodista o se le paga o se le pega”–You either pay off a journalist or you hit them.