Ecuador libel ruling threatens press freedom

[Commentary] Freedom of expression and the public's right to know suffered a chilling setback recently when Ecuador's National Court of Justice upheld a questionable ruling to send four newspaper employees to prison for three years and to fine their newspaper $42 million - for criticizing the nation's president.

The country's thuggish chief executive, Rafael Correa, objected to a column by Emilio Palacio in the newspaper El Universo. It called him a dictator, which he is, and suggested that he had ordered troops to fire on a hospital during a protest. The president filed a libel suit in an obvious attempt to silence critics and shut down an unfriendly paper. The move was only one element of a heavy-handed and well-documented campaign to squelch dissent. Freedom of the press, which also may be called the freedom of people to express their opinions and to learn the truth about their government, can be a fragile thing in Latin America and under totalitarian governments elsewhere. And it should not be taken for granted in open societies, where the voices defending freedom of speech should be the loudest.