More than ten journalists were robbed in the first week of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The South African government urged tourists not to leave belongings in hotels, but journalists are easy targets because they carry valuable equipment.
TV Globo photographer Márcio Alexandre de Souza, 36 years old, was shot and killed Sunday morning, June 20, in São Cristóvão, in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro, reported the newspaper O Globo.
Police identified the name of at least one journalist in the agendas and papers found in the search operations against an armed group, the Paraguayan People's Army (EPP) in Concepción, in the north of the country, according to La Nación.
There are several new updates in the political process surrounding Ecuador’s polemic Communications Law:
Segundo Carrascal Carrasco, editor of the weekly Nor Oriente, was released by the Supreme Court of Lima, after spending more than five months in prison for defamation, Crónica Viva reports.
José Enrique Crousillat and Genaro Delgado Parker, who were two of the most powerful men in Peruvian TV, are now fugitives from justice. Crousillat shamelessly sold the editorial line of América TV (Channel 4) to the mafia of then-President Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos; Delgado Parker dodged his continuing debts to his employees, drove Panamericana TV (Channel 5) into failure, and allegedly stole some of its trucks. Now, they’ve both escaped.
The Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) reports that hackers attempted to sabotage the website of the director of the television program Contravía, Hollman Morris. (See more Knight Center stories about Morris here.) According to a technician's report, the attack used malicious code to link the website to pages associated with junk mail, which could lead the website to being blocked by search engines.
The government offensive against the channel Globovisión isn't stopping. The Venezuelan president warned he could expropriate the television station's shares, increasing pressure against the last opposition channel in the country, reported Reuters.
Violence against journalists in Honduras and Mexico and government actions against the media in Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba, and Colombia were discussed this week at a U.S. House panel on press freedom in the Americas, The Dallas Morning News and AFP report.
International broadcasters are looking into muting or filtering the blaring ambient noise of the vuvuzela at the World Cup, but Brazilians have an additional complaint: the national team’s play-by-play announcer Galvão Bueno. His non-stop talking during the opening ceremony led to millions of posts on Twitter of “Cala boca, Galvão” (Shut up, Galvão), making it the site's top trending topic for the last five days.