Lcdo. Carlos Francisco Ramos Hernández

One month after Gov. Jenniffer González Colón signed Senate Bill 63, which amended the Transparency Law, attorney Verónica Ferraiuoli, coordinator of the Initiative for Deregulation and Administrative Efficiency (IDEA, in Spanish), announced with great media fanfare the creation of the Public Transparency Portal, a digital platform “to submit and track public information requests” sent to agencies in the executive branch.

A few weeks ago, I attended the commencement ceremony of the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus. One figure was omnipresent throughout the ceremony: the federally appointed Fiscal Control Board, whose enabling federal law, PROMESA, recently marked its 10th anniversary.

“The silences of the law have, or can have, social consequences,” writes Efrén Rivera Ramos, a professor, lawyer, and journalist. That is why, when courts remain silent in the face of attacks on fundamental rights, the effect can be to allow injustices that undermine their institutional legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

The unfounded and at times violent attacks on journalists and news organizations in the United States, Puerto Rico, and around the world have become part of everyday life. Fewer critical voices are challenging those in power. That comes as no surprise: data from regional and global nongovernmental organizations show mounting threats to press freedom.

“One Battle After Another” is the title of one of the movies favored to win an Oscar next year, and it is also an apt description of the advocacy and public-education work we have done in recent months against Senate Bill 63 — now Act 156-2025 — which amended Puerto Rico’s Transparency Law.

Since 2022, more than 80 students have learned through workshops how to verify information, identify reliable sources, and analyze how gender and racial identity are portrayed in the media to understand how those representations shape public perception of a group or community. They have also explored how to create podcasts and use rap as a narrative tool.

Transparency has become a worn-out slogan, invoked by politicians to create the illusion of openness and accountability. Even worse, it has been weaponized to undermine the value of diversity in a distorted version of reality, as in the Trump regime’s case. In practice, politicians and officials say one thing and do another, or announce “achievements” while concealing the how and why to avoid public scrutiny.

The debate over who qualifies as “press” —and who gets to call themselves a journalist— has stirred controversy for years in Puerto Rico and in the United States. So has the legitimacy of the so-called “official” press pass issued by the Puerto Rico Department of State. Most local reporters, including the team at the Centro […]

As part of Press Week, we debut this new column dedicated to reflecting on and promoting understanding of press freedom in Puerto Rico and around the world, as well as the challenges journalists face in telling their stories.