DENVER – Ballantine Communications director Elizabeth Ballantine took over Tuesday as president of the Inter American Press Association, an unusual elevation of an executive from a small newspaper group to the head of the multinational media organization.
Inter American promotes freedom of expression throughout the Western Hemisphere, and Ballantine takes the helm at a time that Latin American journalists are suffering increasing violence while U.S. journalists are under pressure for reporting about broad seizures of Internet and phone records of ordinary citizens.
“No battles are ever won. We have to keep winning them over and over again,” Ballantine said in an interview. “We can’t let the freedoms we’ve won be invidiously snipped away.”
Ballantine’s election made news internationally. Tuesday morning, reporters from Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere lined up to interview her.
Ballantine Communications Inc. owns The Durango Herald, Cortez Journal, Mancos Times and Dolores Star. Her brother, Richard Ballantine, recently stepped down as publisher of the Herald. Elizabeth Ballantine also is a director of McClatchy Newspapers.
In Latin America, democratic elections often have not brought open governments. Ballantine cited Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador as the biggest problems. In June, Ecuador adopted a law allowing government censorship of the press.
Fourteen Latin American journalists have been murdered in the last six months, making it the most violent time of the last five years for the profession, said Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the Inter American Press Association’s press freedom committee, in a speech Sunday.
Although reporters in the United States have not endured the same level of violence, the country isn’t free from problems.
“The government of the United States is the one that has caused us the most surprise, with a system of spying on the Internet and friendly governments under the recurring excuse that national security is above anything else, including above the basic principles which that nation’s founding fathers set down in indelible ink more than 200 years ago in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights,” Paolillo said.
IAPA reports cite the secret seizure of Associated Press telephone records and the use of criminal prosecutions to deal with leaks of classified information. The Obama administration has brought more prosecutions under the World War I-era Espionage Act than the last four presidents combined, including the imprisonment of the Central Intelligence Agency officer who first revealed the CIA was waterboarding detainees.
IAPA is an organization of media owners. It is well known in Latin America, although it has faded in North America in the last decade. Ballantine wants to restore its prominence in the United States.
“My goals are to increase the voice of IAPA in the United States and to be heard on freedom-of-the-press issues, surveillance and attempts to criminalize leaks,” she said.
Ballantine also wants to use the organization’s Latin American clout to help make sure Hispanics in the Four Corners “are heard from and have more room in the public space than they have had in our culture in Colorado.”
Denver has started the Biennial of the Americas, an arts and ideas conference, and Ballantine has talked to city officials about including Durango in some of the events.
IAPA’s board of directors elects a new president every year, alternating between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
jhanel@durangoherald.com
