Books in Brief: Latin American Media: Guidance and Censorship

Latin American Media: Guidance and Censorship, by Marvin Alisky (Iowa State University Press, 265 pp., $24.95). It’s hardly a record to be proud of. Of the 21 republics in Latin America, Mr. Alisky lists only three as free of media censorship: Venezuela, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Most—Cuba, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama—have strict censorship, which in some countries means that no, or at best very little, criticism of the government is tolerated, in others that the press has become an appendage of the state, a weapon to help mold the people into a certain way of thinking and acting. Cuba is the prime example of the latter. In Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, governments exert what Mr. Alisky calls “media guidance,” a non-overt form of censorship that operates obliquely through control of news sources, pricing of newsprint, licensing regulations, tax penalties, harassment, bribery, etc. To date, reports on press freedom have centered on just that, the major national papers, but Mr. Alisky points out that many millions more Latin Americans listen to the radio and watch TV than read their daily newspaper, and a good portion of this valuable book is devoted to the broadcast media. (Brazil’s leftist President Goulart once stilled broadcast criticism by the simple device of decreeing that the government would get five times as much air time to answer any critical statement as it took to make it.) Latin American Media is not only a splendid guide to the subject, it is filled with telling and incisive detail and heartily recommended to anyone interested in taking a fast and readable ride on the roller coaster that has been Latin American politics in the last half-century. Priscilla l. buckley