Civil Liberties

Correa Says He's No Hypocrite on Press Freedom Re: WikiLeaks

It's just ... there's different rules in Ecuador.

|

For President Rafael Correa, there's no hypocrisy in his defense of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on free speech grounds and the harsh restrictions he imposes on the press in Ecuador.

President Correa says the Latin American press is corrupt and so needs a different set of rules to apply. "Don't let yourself by fooled by what's going on," he told foreign journalists in Ecuador's second city, Guayaquil, on Monday. "There is this image of the media as being about Woodward and Bernstein and the struggle for freedom of expression, but that's not the case here. The press in Latin America is totally corrupt."