The current shortage of newsprint in Venezuela has caused a crisis among print publications that is hurting regional newspapers the most. According to El País, at least three regional dailies have been forced to suspend their operations since early August due to the lack of printing paper. Some of the affected newspapers have circulated for decades, like El Sol, in the city of Maturín, in the state of Monagas, and Antorcha, in El Tigre, in the state of Anzoátegui.
Four journalists were assaulted and hospitalized on Friday, Aug. 22, while covering the first session of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI in Portuguese) on bus transportation of the Rio de Janeiro City Council, reported the News site G1.
The house of journalist and blogger Angelo Rigon was the target of five gunshots in the morning hours of Sunday, Aug. 11, in the town of Maringá (Paraná), reported the newspaper O Diário. The journalist was at home during the attack, but he was not injured. Rigon runs a blog that publishes news and analyses about regional politics.
The director of the Brasilia bureau for the Brazilian magazine Época, Diego Escosteguy, announced that he received insult-filled and threatening messages through Facebook from an anonymous user on Saturday, Aug. 10.
In order to understand how the mafia works, you take on the role of an undercover cop posing as a globe-trotting trafficker. You answer questions about sexual education to further a strip tease done by a model. In order to learn about the teachings of major philosophers, you engage in a virtual battle of theories with one of them. Sounds like a joke? This is the spirit of newsgames, games based on news and current events.
In an article posted on July 30, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) stated its "concern" over the "abrupt economic measures against the country's journalists and news-media companies" implemented by the Venezuelan government.
A media phenomenon has emerged in Brazil in the wake of the massive protests that are spreading throughout the country since June. The news collective Mídia NINJA, broadcasting live from the streets with its "no cuts, no censorship" model, has attracted the attention and admiration of thousands of people in the last few weeks.
A photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) sustained a head wound by the military police during protests in Rio de Janeiro on Monday evening, July 22, 2013.
José Cristian Góes, a reporter from the Brazilian state of Sergipe, was sentenced on July 4 to seven months and a week in jail for writing and posting a fictional short story on local political cronyism in May 2012 for his blog Infonet, reported the daily Conjur.
Since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Brazil has been known as a free country regarding free speech and access to information. Although both rights are guaranteed in the Constitution of 1988, there is a disturbing distance between the words written on paper and their implementation in practice.