Since March 2016, a pink two-story, 300-square-meter house on a tree-lined street in Botafogo, in the southern area of Rio de Janeiro, has been a haven and a venue for both Brazilian and foreign journalists and for those interested in journalism and the ongoing changes surrounding the profession.
Before strong criticism of its inefficiency, and the escalating number of attacks and murders of journalists and human rights defenders that Mexico has experienced in the last almost two decades, the Advisory Council for the Mechanism for the Integral Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Mexico City was finally implemented. The council will seek to make this system in the country’s capital more efficient.
Severe restrictions on freedom of expression that include censorship and closure of media outlets, assaults and attacks against journalists and criminalization of opinion contrary to the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, were documented by an annual report of the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The report specifically analyzed the situation of human rights in Venezuela during 2017.
Folha de S. Paulo, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Brazil, surprised the news industry on Feb. 8 by announcing it would stop publishing content on Facebook as its directors believe that recent changes in the social network’s algorithm diminish the visibility of professional journalism and favor the spread of false content. The newspaper’s executive editor, Sérgio Dávila, says there are reports of similar moves in other newsrooms.
After four journalists from investigative journalism site Armando.info left Venezuela due to a looming defamation lawsuit, an important group of journalists and organizations that defend freedom of expression and the press throughout Latin America have signed a statement warning about the serious deterioration of the conditions facing the Venezuelan press.
The Brazilian Civil Police arrested four people on Feb. 9 in the town of Edealina, in the state of Goiás, who are suspected in the murder of radio broadcaster Jefferson Pureza. Those arrested include councilmember José Eduardo Alves da Silva, of the Party of the Republic (PR) who is accused by police of ordering the crime that occurred on Jan. 17, 2018.
Each day in Caracas, reporters from different independent digital media sites in Venezuela visit the city’s morgues to collect data about the day’s victims. Name and surname, circumstances of death and other information about the deceased are recorded in a journalistic database and trends or important stories make their way onto the sites as more in-depth stories.
Due to what they say is a lack of judicial and procedural guarantees, four prominent Venezuelan journalists who were criminally sued for continued aggravated defamation and aggravated injury (injuria), chose to leave Venezuela, according to the statement they sent to the national and foreign press.
Mexican blogger Pamela Montenegro was shot to death on Feb. 5 in a restaurant in Acapulco.
Raúl Velázquez, Cuban executive director of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and of the Press (ICLEP, for its initials in Spanish), has been missing for six days.
The bodies of a journalist and a publicist were found on Feb. 1 in a cane plantation in Santo Domingo Suchitepéquez, southwest of the Guatemalan capital, according to the public prosecutor.
A Colombian judge sentenced Yean Arlex Buenaventura to 58 years and 3 months in jail for the 2015 murder of journalist Luis Peralta Cuellar and his wife, Sofía Quintero. According to the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP), which represented the victims in court, this is the highest sentence ever handed down in the country for a crime against freedom of expression.