During the highly criticized Venezuelan presidential elections on May 20, monitors of freedom of expression recorded physical attacks on journalists as well as intimidation. It’s more of the same for a community of journalists that has been threatened physically, in the courts and online while covering growing political and societal unrest in recent years.
Mexican authorities arrested Arturo Quintina, known as “El 80,” an alleged drug trafficker suspected of ordering the March 2017 murder of journalist Miroslava Breach, according to El País.
As Latin American journalists prepare to cover the political campaigns and elections taking place across the region over the next few months, they are facing candidates and members of the public hostile to the profession, including some who will use verbal attacks to interfere with their work.
Two Brazilian fact-checking agencies and their collaborators have been targeted by virtual attacks due to a newly launched partnership with Facebook against the spread of false news. Personal attacks on journalists and criticism of the honesty of the agencies have come from right-wing groups accusing the agencies and journalists of attempting to censor and acting with a leftist ideological bias, according to BuzzFeed News.
The project #UmaPorUma (#OneByOne), launched at the end of April, is dedicated to telling the stories of every woman murdered in the State of Pernambuco, Brazil since the beginning of the year.
In 2017, the State of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil had the third highest number of violent crimes in the country. In the State, with 9 million inhabitants, 5,427 people were murdered last year, the highest number in 14 years, according to a survey conducted by site G1.
The call for justice for Mexico’s journalists will not stop, despite years of violence and impunity that plagues the profession in that Latin American country. To mark the one-year anniversary of the murder of Sinaloa-based reporter Javier Valdez, colleagues and friends carried out a National Day of Protest on social media and in person, calling for his killers to be brought to justice and for an end to violence against the journalists who uncover things that many would prefer were kept secret.
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) recently published a contemporary guide on the ethical principles that should govern today's journalism given the context of the digital media era.
Mexican journalist Juan Carlos Huerta was killed in Tabasco on the morning of May 15 in what appears to be a targeted hit. His death comes on the one-year anniversary of the murder of journalist Javier Valdez, calling attention to the grave violence being faced by the Mexican press.
A statement from independent Nicaraguan journalists condemning lethal violence on protesters and attacks on the press, and urging respect for press freedom from the government, has garnered signatures from 35 media outlets, four civil society organizations, 87 journalists and counting.
Salvadoran journalist Manuel Durán Ortega (42), who was arrested a month ago by police while covering a protest against immigration policies in the U.S., could be deported from that country at any time, Reporters Without Borders (RSF, for its acronym in French) reported.
Two suspects in the murder of Nicaraguan journalist Ángel Gahona were sent to prison on May 8 after an initial hearing before a district judge in Managua, the country’s capital, La Prensa reported. However, the journalist’s family as well as the detainees and other civil society organizations, are protesting the accusation made by the public prosecutor’s office, saying it is a strategy of the authorities to avoid accusing the real perpetrators.