After learning that a Colombian prosecutor had lodged a tutela – the country's judicial recourse to restore fundamental rights – against journalist María Jimena Duzán due to an opinion column, scandal broke out in the country as colleagues and press freedom organizations expressed their rejection of the use of this mechanism.
Last Friday, Sept. 21, marked three months since radio journalist Jairo de Sousa was killed in Bragança, Pará, in northern Brazil, yet no suspects have been identified.
The public prosecutor's office of Chiapas confirmed the detention of a man in connection with the Sept. 21 murder of Mario Gómez, a reporter for El Heraldo de Chiapas in Mexico who was shot in the town of Yajalón while leaving his home to complete some work, according to the paper where he was employed. The official said announcements about others implicated in the case could be forthcoming.
The outgoing government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has assigned 75 million Mexican pesos (US $4 million) to the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists and ensured its operation through the end of the year.
Journalistic projects from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, the United States and Venezuela are among the 12 finalists for the Gabriel García Márquez Journalism Awards.
Honduran journalists reported being attacked by demonstrators, police officers and military members during demonstrations in Tegucigalpa on the 197th anniversary of independence.
Although Mexico is known as one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists, the threat to media professionals in the country is not just physical. In many cases, the enemies of freedom of expression and of the press resort not to arms, but to the courts, in an attempt to silence journalistic coverage that goes against their interests.
Journalists working in the Amazon now have a new fund at their disposal to help realize coverage of the region thanks in part to the initiative of reporters working in the area.
An online course on the complex programming language R recently ended with more than 3,300 registered students from 131 countries and all instructional materials for the course are now available. The materials are available to the general public and will act as an ongoing resource for those who are interested in learning more about R.
Latin American newsrooms won four big honors at the 2018 Online Journalism Awards, prestigious prizes recognizing excellent digital journalism.
Communicators threatened for doing their work were officially included in the protection program for human rights defenders of Brazil’s Ministry of Human Rights (MDH, for its initials in Portuguese).
Ecuador’s Organic Law of Communication (LOC, for its initials in Spanish), considered by press freedom organizations as the most repressive law of the continent, could be reformed before the end of 2018.