Janet Hinostroza

After presenting a report on an apparent case of government corruption on La Mañana de 24 Horas in 2012, Hinostroza received a number of anonymous, threatening phone calls. After receiving a call from an unidentified stranger who detailed her young son's daily movements and threatened to kidnap him,[2] Hinostroza decided to take a leave of absence from the news program, which was temporarily taken off the air.[9] She explained that she had spent years enduring insults, but that her family should not have to endure them. The threat to her son, she stated, was “the drop that spilled the cup” (i.e., the straw that broke the camel’s back).[10]

The case in question involved a loan by the state-owned Cofiec Bank, then headed by Pedro Delgado Campaña, an Argentinian second cousin of Correa, to a businessman, Gastón Duzac, who later defaulted on the loan. Hinostroza's reporting uncovered irregularities in the loan and linked Delgado to Duzac.[7] After her report was broadcast, the government compelled her to devote ten minutes of her program to a speech in which a government representative accused her of disrespecting the president.[11]

Hinostroza has said that Ecuador's then interior minister, José Serrano, after hearing about the threats that forced her off the air, immediately offered her protection, but she turned down the offer because "I do not think that an honest journalist should have to do his or her job with bodyguards."[12] Correa himself maintained that the government was "seriously investigating" the threats against Hinostroza and "expressed solidarity" with her, but he added that he still considered her "a politician disguised as a journalist."[9] Hinostroza said that despite the threats, "we won't give up, this is an opportunity to invent new ways to do journalism and in Ecuador we are figuring out how to do it." She added that the only thing that could weaken Correa's power to silence the media would be if "the money runs out, and I don't know if we are near it."[13]

During Hinostroza's absence from La Mañana de 24 Horas, she continued to appear on 30 Plus and on special news reports.[14]

In November 2013, the U.S. State Department hosted Hinostroza, who briefed officials on "press freedom challenges." The officials "expressed concerns about the plight of journalists worldwide and reaffirmed the United States' commitment to freedom of expression."[15] Acting Assistant Secretary of State Uzra Zeya praised Hinostroza and other awardees for their "courage" and "commitment to speaking truth to power."[16]

30 Plus ended its nearly 11-year run on January 11, 2014.[17] Hinostroza explained that investigative journalism "has never been profitable" and that in recent years, the budget of 30 Plus had fallen every year, eventually making it impossible to continue production. Another factor was that "now the doors of public institutions are hundred percent closed" to Teleamazonas, a situation she characterized as "outrageous, unacceptable, and unbelievable" in a country claiming to be a democracy with "full freedom of expression."[18]

"not interested in having a free press" and "has made confrontation of the press a state policy." It has, according to her, "employed different tactics to silence the press, including regulations and legislation. …. It's a government that wants to do many good things for people but is violating the law. So that's why they need a silent press."[19]

Hinostroza has complained about the Ecuadoran government’s introduction of the legal concept of "media lynching," meaning "a concerted effort of media and journalists to damage the reputation of a public institution or an individual." She has explained this concept as follows: "if I break some story about corruption of a public official or a public entity, and that investigation is followed" by reports on the same matter by another news outlet, Ecuadoran law considers this "a concerted effort to disseminate information that damages the reputation of an individual or entity" and, thus, a punishable offense.[19]

Correa, according to Hinostroza, "has viewed the press as the enemy from the moment he took office. He considers us his only enemy because there is no political opposition" and "says we conspire against him, but all we've done is expose corruption in his government or been critical."[2]

In December 2015 the Toronto Star reported that Hinostroza had made her cell phone available to computer security experts at Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto, who found it had been hacked with software designed to spy on her.[20] In particular they asserted that the brazen-ness of the software strongly suggested that the perpetrators were government security officials.