A group of comedians gathered Sunday, Aug. 22, on the beach of Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro, to demonstrate against a law that bans parodies and jokes about candidates during election campaigns in Brazil, reported O Globo.
A judge issued an order to capture Juan Alcívar, correspondent for the newspaper La Hora de Esmeraldas and the radio station El Nuevo Sol, who is accused of throwing a tear gas bomb in the compound where President Rafael Correa lead a political rally La Concordia in July, reported EFE and Radio Sucre
Even as controversy erupted in Venezuela over a ban on the publication of violent photos, in Colombia a senator from the ruling coalition has offered up a bill that would prohibit the publication of "mildly pornographic" or sensational images in print media and websites, reported El Espectador and the news agency Europa Press.
A police operation ended in the capture of Marco Álvarez Barahona, the lead suspect in the killing of radio reporter David Meza Montesinos, who was shot to death last March, La Tribuna reports. According to El Tiempo, two other suspects remain at large.
The government of Alan García backtracked and re-instituted the operating license for La Voz de Bagua (The Voice of Bagua), the small radio station closed more than a year ago after the violent unrest in this province of the Peruvian Amazon, reported La República and EFE.
Alleged members of the organized crime group Los Zetas directly threatened the editors of La Jornada Zacatecas, Imagen, and El Diario NTR– all based in the state of Zacatecas– and demanded they put a letter denouncing the Mexican military on the front page of their newspapers, La Jornada reports.
The three top candidates heading into the country’s Oct. 3 election, Dilma Rousseff, José Serra, and Marina Silva, have signed onto the Chapultepec Declaration — an international charter, first signed in 1994 in México, that protects freedom of expression and information — at this week’s Brazilian Newspaper Association (ANJ) congress in Rio de Janeiro.
The president of Brazil's National Association of Newspapers (ANJ), Judith Brito, announced that the organization is creating a board for self-regulation, reported iG. The board could begin to function as soon as the end of this year. The announcement was made during the opening of the 8th Brazilian Congress of Newspapers, in Rio de Janeiro.
The government announced it revoked the license of Fibertel, an internet service provider owned by Grupo Clarín, the parent company of Clarín newspaper, Bloomberg reports. “Fibertel doesn’t exist anymore,” said Planning Minister Julio De Vido.
The Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Organization of American States (OAS), Carolina Botero, outlined 13 aspects of the proposed Communication Law that need to be changed or clarified, Hoy reports. Last week, Human Rights Watch also said the bill was in need of several changes.