UPDATE: Journalists Challenge Restrictive Media Law in Ecuador's Constitutional Court

 (Photo credit: Presidencia de la República del Ecuador)

The Wall St. Journal reported this week that journalists and other free press advocates have asked Ecuador's highest court, the Constitutional Court, to overturn a restrictive media law enacted in June (see "TUOL" post 6/14/13) by a National Assembly supportive of President Rafael Correa.

Correa, who has ruled the South American Republic since 2006 and famously grappled with journalists in court whom he has sued for slander, backed the media law revisions. Among the changes in the new law is a redistribution of television frequencies, the lion's share of which were privately owned, so that a third would be run by the government, a third of radio and tv frequencies would remain in the hands of  the private sector, and the remaining 33 percent would be community-run.

Critics of the new law, who contend it suppresses the freedom of opinion and expression, are especially troubled by the creation of a government communications superintendent position that would be empowered to sanction the news media and conduct audits, according to the Journal article.

Ecuador Law Curbs Press Election Coverage; Censorship Feared

Image via WikipediaUrged by President Rafael Correa to stamp out "illegitimate propaganda," the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly has enacted a law preventing news media from writing about candidates or their movements within 45 days of an election, Bloomberg News reports.

Voters will choose a president, vice president and members of the Assembly (which supplanted the National Congress in 2007) on Jan. 20, 2013, but free press advocates, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, are concerned the legislation, that encompasses positive and negative coverage of candidates, may be used to stifle journalists.

Judge's Illness Stalls Paper's Appeal of Libel Judgment for Ecuador's President

Image via WikipediaThe Ecuadorian daily El Universo's appeal of a $40 million libel judgment in favor of  the country's President, Rafael Correa, was delayed this week by the illness of a member of the three-judge panel hearing the appeal, CNN reports.

President Correa, the 48-year-old economist who assumed leadership of the South American republic in 2008, was awarded $40 million last July in a ruling that also resulted in three-year jail terms for El Universo's former opinions editor and its directors. A column entitled No to lies that appeared in February 2011, which branded Correa a "dictator" responsible for a September 2010, attack in which security forces allegedly fired on civilians in a hospital, triggered the lawsuit by the president, who dismissed the allegations as false and  an "outrage," according to the CNN account.

President Correa has rejected El Universo's offer of a public apology conditioned, in part,  on his dropping his suit against journalists and following the nation's access to public information law. In the U.S., a government entity can't be defamed and a public official suing for libel must overcome the challenging legal hurdle of proving "actual malice," meaning that the media defendant published false statements about the official knowing they were untrue or with reckless disregard for the falsity of the statements that impugned the official's reputation.