Soda censorship
César Rodríguez Garavito November 3, 2017
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The Constitutional Court’s decision leaves us a message for current debates about other forms of censorship that the industry deploys. One particularly worrisome is the use or pressure on the media to not transmit pedagogical messages such as those by Educar Consumidores.
The Constitutional Court’s decision leaves us a message for current debates about other forms of censorship that the industry deploys. One particularly worrisome is the use or pressure on the media to not transmit pedagogical messages such as those by Educar Consumidores.
Consumers have just won an important round in a vital discussion: what information are we entitled to have about the products we consume? Do we have the right to know, for example, how many spoons of sugar that soda or artificial juice contain to freely decide whether we buy it or continue to include it in our children’s lunch boxes?
Although it seems obvious that the answer is yes, it was critical that the Constitutional Court affirmed this, as unfortunately, ultra-processed food and beverage companies have deployed a legal and media campaign to block information on the impacts of their products on health.
This was demonstrated by the case decided by the Colombian Constitutional Court (T-543/17). Postobón, the largest national soda producer, filed a complaint to the Superintendent of Industry and Commerce (SIC) to take off the air an informational video made by the NGO Educar Consumidores, which showed the enormous quantities of sugar in soft drinks, teas, and artificial juice, and their negative impacts on health. In an unprecedented decision, the SIC censored the video and ordered that from now on, any similar message would have to pass through the SIC for its prior approval.
This is why Dejusticia, Educar Consumidores, and a group of other organizations brought tutelas, an extraordinary remedy for the violation of fundamental rights, against the SIC. The Court ruled in our favor. The court reminded Postobón and the SIC that a democracy and a market economy do not function without free information. If companies have the right to advertise their products, then organizations have the right to inform citizens about the risks of those products, and the consumers have the right to receive that information.
The ruling is a strong proclamation for current debates about other forms of censorship that the industry pushes for. One particularly worrisome strategy is the industry’s pressure on the media to restrict them from broadcasting informative public service announcements, such as those by Educar Consumidores. Earlier this year, RCN Television, which belongs to the same conglomerate as Postobón, filed a complaint against the director of that NGO for allegedly infringing on copyright by using an image from its soap opera Azúcar in a campaign about the risks of sweetened beverages. It is reprehensible enough that a company would use its media outlet not to promote the freedom of expression but to inhibit it in order to protect its business interests, but it is even more shameful that it is done with the threat of four to eight years of imprisonment.
A subtler but equally worrisome strategy is the threat that companies make against media outlets that they will stop buying their advertising spaces if the outlets continue to broadcast critical information against their products. At a time when commercial revenue is increasingly scarce, this type of pressure effectively becomes a form of censorship, similar to the way many governments have forced media outlets into silence.
Just as they have bravely resisted government pressures in the past, the media today must resist the pressures by private advertisers and industries. Failing to do so would be giving up the keys to freedom of expression and the right of citizens to be informed.