National Press Club encourages members to sign open letter to keep Latin America's top investigative journalist free

The National Press Club and its Press Freedom Team is working to keep one of Latin America’s top investigative reporters, Gustavo Gorriti, out of prison and requests club members' help by signing an open letter supporting Gorriti and his colleagues at IDL-Reporteros.

The letter can be found here.

Supporters plan to present the letter to the Peruvian embassy and to key U.S. policymakers involved in allocating U.S. foreign aid to Peru.

Gorriti has achieved global recognition for his groundbreaking work revealing political corruption in his home country of Peru. He had a leading role in the continent-spanning “Lava Jato” (Car Wash) investigation that exposed a web of graft and collusion that spanned multiple countries. 

Now, some of the corrupt politicians who are on trial or in prison because of Gorriti’s reporting are turning on him and the investigative news outlet he founded, IDL-Reporteros, contending the journalists and the prosecutors who brought charges based on the journalists’ work are a criminal mafia.

Press club leaders have previously condemned the persecution of Gorriti, calling the accusations against him "patently absurd" in a March statement. Yet, the allegations have gained legal traction in Peru’s fraught political climate. Gorriti, a former Harvard University Nieman Foundation fellow, is in real danger of being imprisoned.