This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 17th, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Ecuador's president is taking aim at free and open communication in that country seeking to not only license media

outlets but also restrict those who may use those outlets to communicate with

the public. Gabriella Calderon editor of El Kato.org, lives in Ecuador and communicates using media outlets there.

She comments.

Raffal Correa is an economist.

He studied in the University of Chicago at Illinois and he studied in Belgium.

He did his master's and actually he did his master's in Illinois and he also studied in Belgium before and he's the

president of our country. He's part of the current of the socialism of the 21st

century and what has happened most markedly in the past year

which is his third year in power is a systematic attack of all independent media outlets.

And this is not just something to silence critics.

It has an ideological component to it in his latest inaugural speech when he won elections again.

And it was this January.

He said that there's a basic and coherence between private ownership

of the media and giving a public service, which is communication. So he believes there's an inherent evil in the

media being privately owned. So he does not believe that private sector actors can provide

public services?

I think that's a valid assertion.

I certainly know that he doesn't believe that privately owned media can provide a better

service than state-owned media.

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