Press resistance in Nicaragua

Abstract

Under persecution by the dictatorship, the resistance of independent journalism keeps alive the flame of freedom of the press as a reserve of democracy.

The purpose of these lines is to tell how journalism is done in Nicaragua under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, and the challenges faced by journalists. A decade before the emergence of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Daniel Ortega defined the independent press as "the enemy" that must be crushed, and long before the era of fake news, he labeled journalists as "children of Goebbels", unleashing virulent lynching campaigns in the official media in response to allegations of corruption and abuses of power by his government. His wife, the all-powerful Rosario Murillo, spokesperson of the regime, invented the concept of "uncontaminated information", to refer to the official information in "pure state" that would reach his supporters without passing through the filter of uncomfortable questions, the informative contrast, and the counter-power of the independent press.