Hit, Miss or Somewhere in Between?

Panelists at the American University's American Forum said that prominent media, such as the Los Angelos Times, New York Times and National Public Radio have accurately covered Latin America, however, they fessed to turning to other news sources outside of American news outlets for international news.

So, what does that truly say about the coverage of Latin America? Perhaps American media is covering Latin America, but they are not covering it well enough. Panelist and director of the Brazil Institute of the Washington Wilson Center, Paulo Sotero Marques agreed, saying coverage was "pretty decent, [but] nothing spectacular.

Panelist Jose Carreno Figueras said immigration and security are the two main topics that are reported on in Latin America.

Yet, panelists said that corruption has negatively impacted the amount of coverage in Latin America and journalists ability to report. And, with the history of oppression, self-censorship still remains and hinders coverage as well, particularly in Mexico where citizens feel that there will be repressions, sometimes violent, Marques said.

Rick Rockwell, panelist and professor at AU, said that journalists in Mexico are constantly threatened. The country can be a danger zone for journalists, and is not too far away from Iraq in terms of oppression, he said.

"Organized crime is what kills journalists in Brazil," said Marques.

One audience member said that Anti-American sentiment isn't growing in Latin America, but rather an anti-Bush sentiment is present, which has put journalists at risk.

According to Marques, the lack of interest among young people and the decline of newspaper readership has also limited Latin American coverage. He said you will probably carry around "a piece of plastic" that will be your newspaper one day.

Latin America is such a vast piece of land that panelists only tackled specific countries such as Mexico and Brazil, which didn't give the audience a broad perspective of U.S. coverage of Latin America as a whole.

Marques applauded coverage by NPR. "If you are a good reporter, you will get the facts; it shouldn't matter if they are liberal [or conservative,]... as long as they are professional about their work, he said.

The audience asked few questions, which limited the discussion of the panelists, yet, the forum identified that coverage of Latin America was subpar.