San Salvador, April 17. The president of the Salvadoran Congress, Ernesto Castro, said on Monday that “all youtubers and content generators” will be able to “cover” the sessions of this state body from this Tuesday.
“Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, ALL YOUTUBERS and social media content generators are invited to @AsambleaSV (Legislative Assembly), to cover the ordinary and extraordinary plenary sessions,” Castro posted on Twitter.
He added that, according to him, “in this way they will be able to directly inform our people, both those who live here in our country and our brothers in the diaspora”.
The Salvadoran press union denounced the fact that Congress, with a large pro-government majority, approved “gag reforms” or which give rise to the “criminalization of journalistic work”.
According to figures from the Aggression Monitoring Center of the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES), in 2022 there were 24 cases of press violations attributed to officials and in 13 of the cases those indicated are deputies.
According to local news reports, in August 2022, YouTuber Roberto Silva was arraigned on charges of expressions of violence against women and other charges.
These would have happened in the context of the 2021 legislative elections, where Silva would have been accredited as a journalist by a government media.