Wilma Maldonado Arrigoitia, president of the journalism association, specifically called for Secretary of State Francisco Domenech to stop the practice of censoring journalistic work in progress, as testified under oath by former Secretary of Economic Development (DDEC) Sebastian Negron Reichard.

  Journalists serving on the OPC board, as well as several of its members, can attest that the government’s handling of their information requests closely mirrors the process described by the former official, who is now reporting on events that took place last October.

  “This conversation between Domenech and Negron Reichard cannot be taken lightly, as if it were merely an isolated incident sparked by political gossip between two factions of the New Progressive Party,” said Maldonado Arrigoitía.

  She noted that “these conversations reveal a pattern designed by the Gonzalez-Domenech administration to prevent the public from accessing information it deems politically damaging.”

  “It is prior restraint, expressed in an absolutely crude manner,” she added.

The conversations demonstrate, she noted, a brutal centralization of communications in which the Secretary of State usurps the functions belonging to agency heads regarding their interaction with the press—and, worse yet, their ministerial duty to disclose public information.

  The exchange between the two government officials at the time demonstrates that, as a matter of routine, information requests made by the press to agencies—and even follow-up questions that do not constitute formal information requests under the Transparency Law—must pass through La Fortaleza.

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