Press Society condemns court ruling

A SUPREME COURT  decision that  fined the newspaper Panama America over a story it published  15 years ago about former Supreme Court Judge Winston Spadafora has been condemned  by The Inter-American Press Society (SIP)

“This case against freedom of the press may need to go before Inter-American bodies, having exhausted the judicial process in the country,” the SIP said.

Reporters Jean Marcel Chéry and Gustavo Aparicio and the newspaper were ordered to pay $25,000 to Spadafora for a 2001 story that reported the construction of a public road that directly benefitted the judge because it gave him access to a property he owned.

Claudio Paulillo, chairman of the SIP’s Committee on Freedom of the Press, called the ruling a “disastrous precedent for freedom of the press that will influence the efforts of investigative journalism.”

He called the decision “judicial retaliation” and said it “does nothing but encourage self-censorship, which directly affects the right to information for all Panamanians.”

Spadafora was one of two former jusges whose names surfaced in a previous Supreme Court scandal. He was a minister in a previous  Panamenista  government headed by Mireya Moscoso.