These days the daily newspapers are issuing dire warnings about the Moscoso administration's alleged intention to follow its establishment of control over the judicial and legislative branches of government with moves to control the news media. At the same time, legislator Francisco Ameglio has proposed a broad new censorship law.

Ameglio's original gripe was the proliferation of gory pictures on the covers of La Critica and El Siglo. However, the legislator's proposal is vague and if passed would be open to interpretations that could make it a powerful tool to stifle the reporting of legitimate news and punish media whose editorial stands differ from the opinions of whatever administration happens to be in power. For example, were a TV news team to investigate allegations that the National Police are involved in arms smuggling to Colombia's AUC paramiltary, and show the results of such trafficking, under Ameglio's law that might amount to graphic depiction of violence that could only be aired between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.

And meanwhile, pick up La Critica and you will see that it is full of government advertising and legal notices. A perusal of El Siglo similarly reveals that the Ombudsman's office and other Partido Popular (former Christian Democrat) enclaves in government buy a lot of ads in that tabloid, which also carries plenty of legal notices.

If tabloid gore is the real concern, the government could simply stop subsidizing it. Without passing any new law, the Moscoso administration could stop advertising in media that regularly feature explicit photos of corpses on their covers. Without going to the extremes of Ameglio's proposed law, President Moscoso and the legislature that she now controls could bar the publication of legal notices in the necro-porn tabloids and prohibit the expenditure of public funds for advertising in such publications.

As to the issue of President Moscoso's intentions, vigilance is always necessary but a careful examination of her record suggests that the daily newspapers' conclusions may be too severe.

More than 90 Panamanian journalists face criminal defamation charges, most of them spurious and many of the most unfounded brought by Mireya Moscoso's appointees. At present there are only two Panamanian journalists in prison, awaiting trial on extortion charges after a sting operation made it appear that they demanded and accepted money to stop a series of unfavorable reports about a politically well connected businessman.

The president has often complained of unfavorable press coverage, but she has not personally filed criminal charges about it. When her ministers, aides and other appointees have filed such charges, however, she has taken the position that Panamanian law gives people who think that they have been defamed this right and her people can exercise their rights like any other citizen.

Mireya repealed some, but not all, of the gag laws surviving from the days of the dictatorship. She vetoed legislation --- which passed unanimously in the assembly --- that would have created a narrow legal definition of who is and who isn't a journalist.

President Moscoso signed a freedom of information law, and then promulgated regulations that made this legislation a meaningless joke.

The Moscoso administration indulged in a government advertising boycott against the now defunct El Universal, and banned its reporters from covering certain news events or entering certain government offices, all for explicitly political reasons.

So let's put all of this into perspective.

First, when a politician complains about unfavorable press coverage, that's not an assault upon free expression but rather the exercise of it. President Moscoso's complaints may or may not be well founded --- mostly, in this newspaper's opinion, they are not --- but she has the right to make her point.

Second, it would be appropriate for a president to tell her appointees that although they have a legal right to bring dubious criminal charges against journalists, if they do so they will no longer have government jobs. Mireya's failure to draw such a line is but one more example of the weakness that has kept her from dealing with the rampant corruption in her entourage.

Third, the Moscoso administration's many attempts to restrict information about government operations and the expenditure of public funds are obnoxious. These efforts are a salient feature of the generalized corruption that characterizes this presidency.

Fourth, no publisher or broadcaster is entitled to subsidies by way of government advertising. In hard times like these, and given that most government advertising is crude self-promotion by public officials rather than the legitimate dissemination of useful information, there are good reasons to cut such spending.

Fifth, if approved Francisco Ameglio's proposed new censorship law would endure past the next elections. Thus it should not be viewed in light of Mireya Moscoso's real or supposed intentions, but in the context of how it might be used by an administration with unquestionably totalitarian motives. It's a broad and unnecessary infringement on the free exchange of ideas and it ought to be rejected.

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

Janis Joplin

It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.

Annie Besant

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

Claud Cockburn

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