An Inconvenient Truth: Swine Flu Politics and the Argentine Media /A New Call to Release Cuba's Jailed Reporters/

JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS
A News Blog

An Inconvenient Truth: Swine Flu Politics and the Argentine Media

Until last week, the Argentine press had ignored the H1N1 virus (swine flu). By Friday (July 10), millions of Argentines stayed home from work, and the flu was blamed for 82 deaths, more than anyplace else in South America, and trailing only Mexico and the United States worldwide, the Associated Press reports. The topic exploded into the headlines only the day after mid-term legislative elections, “as if the pandemic, secondary during the electoral campaign, had suddenly taken the country by assault," the AFP news agency said.
At least, that's how it was in the media. Swine flu's bleak headlines now dominate the news agenda, the Argenpress blog adds.
And rightly so. The new health minister estimates that some 100,000 Argentines are infected—"a politically incorrect number," the La Nación newspaper says—forcing it into the news. This has caused more problems for President Cristina Fernández, whose party took a beating at the polls. She called on the media to be prudent and "not to generate panic," El Mercurio reports from Chile (where 19 deaths are blamed on the flu and more than 9,000 cases are reported).
The first case in Argentina was known May 6, and dozens of deaths followed. But authorities only admitted the first fatalities on July 4, and the government declared a special holiday Friday for government workers. Banks were ordered closed. People in Buenos Aires avoided the traditional greeting: a kiss on the cheek. Still, the government didn't declare a state of emergency, the Miami Herald reports.
People in the street think information about the outbreak was hidden until after the elections had passed, Viviana García Sotelo writes for MDZ Online. The media's role in the crisis remains unclear, but as Argenpress observes, ever since H1N1 seized the Argentina news agenda, analysis of the ruling party's reversal of fortune has disappeared from the press.
For more sources, see the original Spanish version of this post.

Other Related Headlines:
» More posts on swine flu and Journalism in the Americas (Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas)
• Posted by Ingrid Bachmann/DG at 07/10/2009 - 16:12
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A New Call to Release Cuba's Jailed Reporters

The International Press Institute (IPI) has called on the Cuban government to free 22 jailed journalists, almost all of whom have been imprisoned since 2003, EFE reports.
In June, a report by the United Nations Human Rights Council praised Cuba for its successes in promoting the right to education, food, and health care but criticized it for restricting freedom of expression. The IPI commended the council for airing those concerns but worried that the report effectively minimized freedom of expression and the press as fundamental human rights
“Cuba’s suppression of dissenting voices, thoroughly and systematically carried out for so many years, strongly affects our ability to understand and assess the situation in the country,” the director of the IPI said."

Other Related Headlines:
» EU Envoy to Cuba Urged to Seek Release of Jailed Journalists (Committee to Protect Journalists)
• Posted by Ingrid Bachmann/JV at 07/09/2009 - 10:38

• Topics:
• arrest
• Cuba
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Washington Calls for 'Amnesty' for U.S. Journalists Jailed in North Korea

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has urged the North Korean government to grant “amnesty” to Euna Lee and Laura Ling, dropping previous demands that they be released on humanitarian grounds, the Washington Post reports.
Ling told her sister in a phone call this week that the pair had broken North Korean law and needed Washington diplomacy to help them. The two were sentenced last month to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the country from China while researching a story for San Francisco-based Current TV.

Other Related Headlines:
» Sister Hears from Journalist Held in N. Korea (CNN International)
» This Time, the Story Controls Lisa Ling (Sacramento Bee)
» Jailed Reporters' Health at Risk, Family Says (KCRA TV)
• Posted by Dean Graber at 07/10/2009 - 12:25

• Topics:
• detention
• foreign reporting
• North Korea
• USA
Journalism in America
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