Since president Rafael Correa took office, his new measures have made Ecuador one of the countries in the world with the lowest press freedom scores at the moment. Reporters Without Borders reports that at least 17 broadcast media channels have been shut down since the beginning of the year. The Washington Post has called it "the most comprehensive and ruthless assault on free media underway in the Western hemisphere." The only countries in South America with more restrictive media laws are Venezuela and Cuba.
Arch Puddington, Vice President for Research at Freedom House, is an expert on democratic governance, as well as media and internet freedom. According to him, since Correa came to power he is suppressing political opponents in two ways; firstly by pursuing major libel and slander cases including criminal libel charges against domestic press outlets, and secondly by closing down opposition media. In their place, Correa has opened an impressive state controlled media group of TV and radio channels, effectively serving as a mouthpiece for his own views.
Correa has based his political appeal in part by being "anti Western" -or more specifically, anti US. Granting Assange asylum is probably largely meant to impress the left; a way of showing that leaders like Correa are capable of standing up against the superpower in the North, believes American media expert Puddington. "For the president of Ecuador to be claiming to stand up for freedom of expression is a bit cynical," he comments.
Puddington thinks democratic South American states like Chile and Colombia could issue statements that sharply criticize Correas new policies, in defense of free press in the region.
While Assange is considering his options inside the Ecudaorian Embassy in London he is now in the peculiar situation of hiding from the Nordic country he used to praise for its generous press freedom laws -Sweden is ranked 12th on the Press Freedom Index- in a political territory belonging to the state of increasingly poor scoring Ecuador.
As Puddington points out, Julian Assange started out as the frontman of Wikileaks, an organisation defending freedom of expression worldwide. During the recent turn of events however we have seen Assange aligning himself with Rafael Correa and Vladimir Putin, both known for clamping down on domestic press in their own countries. (Assange has recently signed on for working with RT, a Putin controlled TV channel.)
Supporters of the free flow of information are bound to encounter a clear case of conflicting messages here, and they need to be addressed by Assange himself at this point.