The economic good fortunes of Brazil, as increased newspaper circulation and online advertising revenue show, seem to have caught the attention of foreign media companies. Last Sunday, the New York Times announced its plans to launch a Portuguese site in Brazil during the second half of 2013.
In what’s become the latest episode of aggressions against journalists during the electoral season in Brazil – especially in smaller municipalities – a group of people who were celebrating the victory of one of the candidates for the prefecture of Lagoa Seca threatened to death and tried to break into the car of a reporter from TV Correio, reported Portal Correio.
Owner of the newspaper Jornal da Praça, Luis Henrique Georges, was shot to death in the Brazilian city of Ponta Porã, Mato Grosso do Sul, near the border with Paraguay on Thursday, Oct. 4, reported Uol.
Brazilian reporter Patrícia Cornils got a surprising response after sharing on Facebook a Google Docs worksheet listing fires in the favelas of São Paulo. Several people joined the collaborative reporting project that became Fogo no Barraco (Fire in the Shanty), an interactive map that cross references data on fires with real estate appreciation near the affected areas. The map demonstrates the journalistic possibilities of online collaboration and crowdsourcing information.
A Brazilian journalist for Record News was violently attacked with an iron rod, leaving him with a head injury, two broken ribs and bruises on his body, while covering a rally for a mayoral candidate in Estreito, Maranhão.
On Sept. 18, Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) addressed the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights about the current situation in Venezuela in the last weeks before the Oct. 7 presidential elections.
The Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) honored Brazilian reporter Mauri König with the 2012 International Press Freedom Award, an annual recognition for courageous reporting, the organization announced on its website.
A photographer was attacked at a demonstration in Venezuela as a confrontation broke out between pro-government and opposition supporters on Wednesday, Sept. 12, reported the website Notícias 24.
President Hugo Chávez's administration informed the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) on Tuesday, Sept. 11, that Venezuela will begin the formal process of leaving the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the IACHR Court, according to the website El Mundo.
Judicial censorship of newspapers and blogs is on the rise leading up to municipal elections in Brazil. On Monday, Sept. 3, journalist Fernando Conceição claimed that a mayoral candidate tried to censor him in the city of Salvador.