El Universo

• 1. Introduction

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  El Universo appeared in a New York Times editorial in 2012. The editorial called a verdict against the newspaper "a staggering, shameful blow to the country's democracy." The newspaper had not published a secret or a fabrication. An editor had run an opinion column about events during a political crisis. What followed was a criminal prosecution, enormous damages, and international condemnation. El Universo had been one of Ecuador's major newspapers since the early twentieth century. How did a paper with that history find itself on trial? And what had the column said?

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• 2. Guayaquil, 1921

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  Ismael Pérez Pazmiño published the first edition of El Universo on the 16th of September, 1921, in the port city of Guayaquil. The name he chose reached for something vast: in Spanish, El Universo means The Universe. Over the decades that followed, the paper published through periods of military dictatorship. Only small interruptions broke its record of continuous publication.

  Three international press organizations eventually welcomed El Universo as a member. These were the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Editores de Periódicos, the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa, and the World Association of Newspapers. Its ten editorial sections covered everything from national politics and economics to crime, migration, and sport. A dedicated section called El Gran Guayaquil reported on the city where the paper was based. Four supplements also served specialized readers. La Revista was a Sunday magazine. Mi Mundo, a children's supplement, appeared on Saturdays. Negocios, an economics supplement, also ran on Saturdays. Sambo was a monthly magazine directed at the Samborondón area.

  One of its editors would eventually publish an opinion that brought the newspaper into a confrontation with Ecuador's own government.

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• 3. A Column and a Complaint

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  In 2010, President Rafael Correa filed a criminal libel complaint against El Universo's directors and its editor, Emilio Palacio. The complaint focused on a column Palacio had written. In it, Palacio stated that Correa had permitted soldiers to fire on a hospital to suppress a violent police protest. A temporary magistrate awarded the president US$42 million in damages.

  Ecuador's Supreme Court upheld the verdict on the 17th of February, 2012. Four days later, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights suspended the ruling pending further review. Newspapers, human rights groups, and press freedom organizations across the world condemned the decision. Reporters Without Borders called the verdict "draconian" and a "grave legal precedent." Correa offered his own reading. He described the result as a blow against what he called the "dictatorship" of a corrupt press.

  Ten days after the Supreme Court acted, Correa himself would be the next to move.

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• 4. Pardon and Prize

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  On the 27th of February, 2012, Correa pardoned all four defendants. He stated publicly that he had "never wanted this trial." What he had wanted, he said, was only for the public to know the truth.

  Later that year, El Universo received the inter-American Maria Moors Cabot prize. The prize citation addressed the newspaper and its colleagues across the Ecuadorian press. It read: "Even in the face of Correa's bullying and the threat of incarceration, El Universo and many other Ecuadoran journalists have courageously defended their right and obligation to speak out for a democratic society."

  The citation described press freedom as both a right and an obligation, words that carried particular weight given what El Universo's editors had just endured.

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