Ecuador paper fined over editorial cartoon

QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s media oversight agency has fined the newspaper El Universo for a cartoon it published about prosecutors’ Dec. 27 search of the home of a journalist who has since left the country.

The agency also ordered Xavier Bonilla on Friday to “correct” his cartoon, which portrays soldiers slamming a door down onto Fernando Villavicencio and hauling computers and boxes of files from his home.

Villavicencio investigates oil industry corruption and President Rafael Correa’s administration said he illegally obtained emails from Correa’s account.

The oversight agency said the cartoon “did not correspond to reality.” It fined El Universo two percent of its revenues from the last three months. Neither officials of the newspaper or Bonilla could immediately be reached for comment.

The oversight agency is dominated by Correa loyalists.