Digital media has experienced strong growth over the past few decades, facilitated by increasing Internet penetration rates and the number of users. Four large companies – Grupo Cartes, Grupo Vierci, Grupo Zucolillo and Grupo Albavisión – control the traditional press and own most of the newspapers, radio stations and TV channels. Community media are struggling to survive. The main media outlets are ABC Color, Diario La Nación, Diario Ultima Hora, Canal Telefuturo, Canal 9 SNT, Radio Cardinal ABC and Radio Monumental. 

Santiago Peña of the National Republican Association (ANR), also known as the Colorado Party, became president in August 2023, with the support of former President Horacio Cartes, whose family owns many media outlets and businesses. The opposition, consisting mainly of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA) and a number of smaller parties, lost many parliamentary seats and departmental governorships. The high degree of political corruption, internal party fragmentation and strong political polarisation do not favour journalistic freedom. 

Paraguay’s 1992 constitution guarantees freedom of expression with no prior censorship, press freedom and journalistic freedom. It also guarantees free access to state-held information and media pluralism, and it establishes the media as a public interest, as well as the right to the protection of sources of information. There is no press or media law, but the Senate has been considering a bill for the protection of journalists and human rights defenders. A law that aims to protect women against sexist violence was recently used as grounds for preventive censorship measures against journalistic investigations. 

Although Paraguay is among South America’s poorest countries, it has experienced high and steady growth over the past decade, with an economy that is the most open among Mercosur countries. However, in the media and journalism sector, unions have been denouncing the growing rate of job insecurity for years.

The border regions with Argentina and Brazil, where drug trafficking and corruption are rampant, are especially dangerous for reporters. Journalists who do investigative reporting there pay with their lives, as was the case with Brazilian journalist Léo Veras, murdered in February 2020, Humberto Andrés Coronel Godoy, killed in September 2022, and Alexander Alvarez, killed in February 2023. All three were murdered in Pedro Juan Caballero, a city on the Brazilian border that is a regional drug trafficking hub. Journalists are also victims of threats from both drug traffickers and the authorities, and judicial harassment. They are often the targets of violence during protests. Most attacks on journalists go unpunished.