Sixty-six aggressions against the Mexican press were registered during the first quarter of 2014 according to a report published April 22 by the freedom of expression and information organization Article 19.
Only 19 percent of all registered cases of journalists’ homicides and disappearances have been heard by a judge and only 10 percent of those have ended in a sentencing, leaving Mexico’s impunity index at 89 percent, according to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in a press release on April 20.
More than half of journalists in Bolivia said they have suffered censorship and/or self-censorship during their professional lives, according to a presentation by researcher Virginie Poyetton on April 16 on her new book “Journalistic censorship and self-censorship in Bolivia. A perspective from within the profession itself,” reported newspaper Opinión.
Reporters Without Borders denounced that Colombian investigative journalist, Claudia Julieta Duque, continues to receive threats as her court case advances against the agents of the country's Department of Security (DAS) who, in the last 10 years, have followed, psychologically tortured and kidnapped her.
Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author who worked as a journalist for years and promoted excellence in the profession, died today in Mexico City at the age of 87, the BBC reported.
In the last several years the administration of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has created a media network that is privately owned but is indirectly controlled by the government in an effort to have direct influence over public opinion, according to a new book about the Bolivian government’s relationship with the media.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calledCuban authorities to release independent journalist Juliet Michelena Diaz, who was arrested on April 7. Diaz was arrested three days before an article she wrote on an episode of police violence she witnessed in La Habana was set to run in Cubanet, a news site based in Miami. The article detailed the use of police dogs in the streets and the arrest and excessive use of force against citizens.
Carlos Mejía Orellana, an employee with Honduran radio station Radio Progreso, was stabbed and killed in the municipality of El Progreso on April 11, Reporters Without Borders informed.
While a fire continues to ravage the Chilean city of Valparaíso since Saturday April 12, the country’s National Council of Television (CNTV) has received up to 81 complaints for television networks’ coverage of the natural disaster, reported the daily La Nación.
Three Latin American countries were listed in the latest edition of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Global Impunity Index. Mexico, Colombia and Brazil occupied, respectively, the seventh, eighth and eleventh place on the list.