Most nations in Americas have laws to suppress media: report

PanARMENIAN.Net - All but one nation in the Americas have criminal defamation laws that can be used against journalists to suppress freedom of expression, according to a report released on Wednesday, March 2, Reuters said.

Only Jamaica has entirely repealed laws that would permit journalists to be prosecuted for their reporting, according to the study released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Two-thirds of the countries in North, Central and South America routinely use such laws to silence dissent and keep information from their citizens, the report said.

"Despite the emerging consensus that criminal defamation laws violate international freedom of expression standards, the continued use of such provisions has deterred the aggressive reporting necessary for robust debate in a free and open society," CPJ's Carlos Lauria and Sara Rafsky wrote in the report, according to Reuters.

"Even if infrequently applied, the continuing existence of these laws represents a lurking danger to free expression."

Laws that can be used against journalists include defamation, libel, calumny, or making false charges, and "desacato" offenses which refer to insulting or offending the state or state officials, the report said.

Specifically the report said 32 out of 33 nations in the Americas penalize defamation with criminal laws that can be used to punish journalists.

Even where such laws are not typically enforced, their very existence has a "chilling effect" on the spread of information, the report said.

Mexico and the United States do not have criminal defamation laws at the federal level, but do at the state level, it said.