After a series of firings and journalists quitting because of complaints of censorship during the recent presidential campaign in Peru, the sudden cancellation of one of the most watched and credible journalistic programs in Peru has prompted a debate about freedom of expression and the impact of media monopolies on citizens' right to information.
After a six-week investigation, Venezuelan police have concluded that journalist Wilfred Ojeda was killed in revenge over a debt and had nothing to do with his journalistic work, reported ACN.
The website for the Honduran newspaper El Libertador was attacked by hackers on June 28, reported IFEX. This is the second time the newspaper has been subject to digital sabotage since the 2009 Honduran coup, which El Libertador opposed.
Mexican journalist Ángel Castillo Corona, columnist for the digital newspaper Portal, was killed along with his teen-age son, early Sunday morning, July 3, when they were assaulted while driving in the city of Tianguistenco in Mexico State, Portal reported.
After the wave of journalist killings in Honduras in 2010 that prompted President Porfirio Lobo to ask the U.S. FBI for help, so far in 2011 three journalists have been killed. Adán Benítez, veteran host and journalist who worked for more than 16 years in radio and television, was shot to death on his way home in the city of La Ceiba on Monday, July 4, reported La Prensa Gráfica.
The freeing of all Cuba's imprisoned dissident journalists in recent months generated expectations about a possible relaxation of strict censorship rules and zero tolerance for opposition under the more than 50 years of leadership by the Castro brothers in Cuba. However, freedom of expression organizations are denouncing a new wave of attacks on independent Cuban journalists, an indication that nothing in fact has changed and the regime of censorship is continuing, according to news reports.
"You cannot curtail the right of information and of the media to investigate," said judge Manuel Aguirre during the ruling issued Thursday, June 30. The judge argued that the role of the media is fundamental for democracy, explained ABC Digital.
The National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL in Spanish) of Venezuela has filed another complaint against opposition television station Globovisión for "inciting hatred" for covering a deadly prison riot in mid-June in the northern state of Miranda, according to the newspaper El Tiempo.
Guatemalan journalist Jorge Arquímides Manchamé Palma was killed in the city of Esquipulas, in the southeastern Guatemalan department of Chiquimula, on Sunday, July 3, reported the newspaper Prensa Libre.
Independent journalist Luis Eduardo Gómez, a witness for prosecutors' investigation into links between politicians and paramilitaries, was killed by two gunmen who shot him from a motorcycle last week in Arboletes, Antioquia, in northwest Colombia, BBC reports.