Newspaper cartoon angers Ecuador govt

MCT Information Services/Bogota

 Last week, Ecuador’s newly formed media watchdog ordered El Universo newspaper to print a “correction” of an editorial cartoon.

The drawing, which provoked tirades from President Rafael Correa, depicted the moment that government security raided the house of Fernando Villavicencio, a journalist and opposition adviser, and confiscated hard drives and laptops.

El Universo cartoonist Xavier ‘Bonil’ Bonilla put a cutline on the bottom of the drawing saying officials were carting away proof of administration corruption.

On Wednesday, the newspaper ran the correction.

This time, Bonilla’s cartoon shows Villavicencio inviting authorities into his home, inviting them to take everything they want and blaming them for being too courteous.

“Call your lawyer,” one of the policemen tells him in a frame, to which Villavicencio responds: “Don’t worry, I trust all of you.”

Correa has said the raid was sparked after Villavicencio was suspected of hacking into the presidential e-mail account.

During his weekly broadcasts, Correa has also unloaded against Bonilla, most recently calling him a “shameless, ignorant, hating coward disguised as a cartoonist.”

The Superintendent of Communication, the government watchdog, said Bonilla and the paper broke the law for taking “an institutional position on the innocence or guilt” of a person who is being investigated.

But the watchdog also said that Bonilla should have put quotes around the cutline on his original cartoon and indicated its source.

El Universo director Carlos Perez said the sanction was so ambiguous that it has created confusion at the paper. “Before, we were keeping an eye on (Bonilla’s) work to make sure it didn’t make the people ‘up there’ (the government) too uncomfortable,” Perez said. “But it’s difficult.” He said the paper might have to quit writing editorials about ongoing cases.