U.S.-Style Ethics Code for Mexico City Paper

By: Mark Fitzgerald Not so many years ago, the code of ethics just adopted by the big Mexico City daily El Universal would have seemed not only risibly idealistic, but deeply impractical.

No subsidies from the government? How's an underpaid reporter supposed to live? No travel paid by sources? Then who's supposed to pay for reporting trips, the newspaper?

For decades, Mexican newspapers, especially those published in the capital, depended on the largesse of a one-party government to subsidize them by slipping money to their reporters, buying tons of useless ads and ordering subscriptions for bureaucrats. In exchange, newspapers printed government handouts as news, and rarely probed too deep into institutionalized corruption.

This cozy system fell apart during the 1990s, hammered first by the peso devaluation that shrank the ocean of money available for subsidies, then by the introduction of the Junco family's truly independent Reforma daily in Mexico City, and finally by the 2000 presidential election of opposition party candidate Vicente Fox, which ended the PRI party's uninterrupted 71-year reign.

El Universal's ethics code is the latest example of how far Mexico City's newspapers have come in the last few years. Announced March 29 by Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz, president general director of the family-owned paper, the code also reflects the professionalizing influence on Mexican papers by such groups as the Inter American Press Association, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and the Freedom Forum.

Much of the code would sound familiar to reporters at U.S. dailies. Plagiarism is forbidden. Hidden cameras and recorders will not be used. Photographs will not be manipulated. Quotations and material attributed to anonymous sources will be "reserved for extraordinary cases, recognizing the risk that this practice comprises for the credibility of the newspaper."

Other parts of the 2,200-word code address practices that Mexican publishers traditionally tolerated and often encouraged. "The journalists of El Universal do not accept favors or gifts of significant value, economic aid, subsidies or free trips, guest stays or any other personal benefit from news sources," it reads. All expenses incurred gathering news, the code says, will be paid for by the newspaper.

At the same time El Universal announced the ethics code, it also took other steps to open up its workings to readers. It created a telephone hot line and separate e-mail address on its Web site (www.eluniversal.com.mx) to encourage readers to report errors, to comment on and to offer news tips. The full ethics code is also posted on the site.

El Universal's effort is similar, though not as extensive, as the "Juan Ciudadano" (www.juanciudadano.com) site that Reforma created a couple of years ago to allow readers to vent about problems with the government -- and the media. It includes a separate link called "malperiodista.com" to report on bad journalists or journalism.

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PAN-AM HIGHWAY

An occasional diary of the working conditions faced by Latin American journalists

In recent days, suspects were arrested for the murders of journalists in Mexico and Peru, while Costa Rica came under fire for dilatory investigations into two still-unsolved assassinations.

BRAZIL

President Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva used National Journalists Day, April 7, to announce his support of a government-run "Federal Journalism Council" to monitor journalist and media ethics. The council is supported by the National Federation of Journalists, a union known as Fenaj.

COSTA RICA

The Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA) demanded that the nation's judiciary and police "step up their efforts" to solve the murders of Ivannia Mora Rodr?guez last Dec. 23 and Parmenio
Medina in 2001. IAPA said there have been no developments in the investigation into Mora's death, while three people have been arrested on suspicion of being killers or accomplices in the murder of Medina, and another two have been held as alleged masterminds of the murder.

The London-based anti-censorship group Article 19 submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in an appeal of the Costa Rican Supreme Court conviction of La Naci?n and its reporter Herrera Ulloa. The Article 19 brief argues that the nation's criminal defamation laws are an illegitimate restriction on the right to freedom of expression, and that the fines imposed in this case, totaling $150,000 are excessive.

MEXICO

Two gay men, including a U.S. citizen, were ordered April 2 held for trial for the murder of Roberto Javier Mora Garcia, the editor of El Ma?ana in Nuevo Laredo, the Houston Chronicle reported. The U.S. citizen, Mario Medina, 23, alleged he was tortured into confessing to the March 19 murder, according to the article by Dudley Althaus. Prosecutors say the motive for the killing was jealously. Medina, they said, wrongly suspected the editor of having an affair with his partner Hiram Oliveros. Oliveros, 28, was charged as an accessory to the murder. Colleagues at the newspaper were reported suspicious of the arrests, and continue to believe Mora was killed by the border city's powerful and violent drug traffickers.

NICARAGUA

Catholic authorities protested as "obscene and offensive" caricatures of the Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando published by the newspapers La Prensa and El Nuevo Diario during the Holy Week leading to Easter Sunday. The caricature published on the front page of El Nuevo Diario's Sunday supplement showed the cardinal in a bathing suit emerging from a pool.

PARAGUAY

Congressional leaders and the Paraguayan Freedom of Expression Forum have formed a special commission in Congress to create a freedom of information law, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reported April 6, citing the Lima newspaper Ultima Hora.

PERU

The mayor of Yungay province, Amaro Le?n Le?n was arrested March 18 as the alleged mastermind in the murder of Radio ?rbita journalist Antonio De La Torre, the Lima-based Institute for Press and Society (IPYS) reported. On April 8, the national police issued an arrest warrant for a second suspect in the Feb. 14 murder, David Julca Orrillo. IPYS quoted police in the city of Huaraz as alleging the mayor paid Julca Orrillo to assassinate the journalist.

VENEZUELA

A Venezuelan military prosecutor has charged Patricia Poleo, director of the daily El Nuevo Pa?s with "instigating rebellion" and "defaming the national armed forces" for publishing reports of a video allegedly showing a group of Cubans inside the facilities of the National Guard's Sixth Regional Command, IPYS reported March 29.