Dan Denvir Writes About the Ecuadorian Body Count

By Joel Mathis
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted May. 13, 2009

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PW contributor Dan Denvir has a story in Columbia Journalism Review about efforts by an Ecuadorian tabloid to offer its readers gruesome coverage of the country's violence. An excerpt:

"In August 2008, Ecuadorian Interior Minister Fernando Bustamante issued new regulations intended to crack down on Extra and other newspapers that made a practice of publishing lurid photographs of corpses. He ordered police to keep dead bodies, whether on the street or in the morgue, from being photographed by reporters. The government, claiming that it acted to protect victims’ privacy, emphasized that the order regulated public servants rather than private photographers. But the move was a clear, if indirect, attack on the widely read and controversial daily. Officers who violated the order and let photographers close to an exposed body would be punished.

"More than eight months later, the covers of Extra still feature photographs of corpses, regularly adjacent to photos of bikini-clad women. Extra staffers concede that the new regulations have made their job a little tougher. But they say that their dedication to getting the photos, coupled with a network of citizen informers who call in tips, ensures that they often arrive before police, who can be less than diligent in securing crime scenes.

"Henry Holguin, Extra’s longtime editor, rejects accusations that the paper exploits misery and death. In fact, he says that Extra is the only Ecuadorian paper that truly belongs to the little people, offering them a shot at justice in a highly unequal country long plagued by police and government corruption, abuse and incompetence. Politicians, he says, are simply embarrassed by the country’s high level of violent crime—and would prefer that it be swept under the rug. 'They are more against the people who write about and photograph the murders than the murderers themselves,' Holguin told me."

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