Three journalists reporting at the infamous Tocorón prison in northern Venezuela were released Oct. 8 after being held by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB for its acronym in Spanish) for two days.
The Public Prosecutor of the State of São Paulo wants to identify and punish those who threaten or persecute journalists on social networks. From now on, it will be possible to make a complaint to the entity’s Center for Combating Cybercrime, which wants to identify groups that incite the actions of “haters.” However, the change is valid only for the state of São Paulo.
Mexican photojournalist Edgar Daniel Esqueda Castro was found dead on Oct. 6 in San Luis Potosi in central Mexico, a day after being kidnapped by men who allegedly identified themselves as police officers.
Bolivian journalist Yadira Peláez, who accused Carlos Flores, a former manager of state-owned Bolivia TV, of sexual harassment, is being sued for economic damage to BTV in a complaint filed by the channel's management, according to El Deber.
The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas is participating in the new Women Journo Heroes campaign led by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). For the month of October, IWMF is asking the community to help in honoring women journalists around the world by sharing photos of stories of courageous women journalists via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
The Gabriel García Márquez Journalism Festival in Medellín, Colombia recognized four Latin American journalism reporting projects from Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Honduras on Sept. 29 as part of the 2017 Gabo Awards.
International and Puerto Rican media have set up shop in the Puerto Rico Convention Center, creating a de facto newsroom in the same building where officials give press conferences and citizens look for resources.
Media and journalism associations in Bolivia are on alert due to a proposal to reform the Penal Code that is under debate in the country's Congress. They claim that Article 200 of the new Code, which provides for sanctions against professional misconduct, poses a threat to press freedom by opening the door to the criminalization of journalists in that country.
When you think about the situation of journalists in Mexico, the first image that comes is one of violence. And for good reason. The country is considered the most dangerous in the American continent to practice this profession. In 2017 alone, at least 11 journalists have been recorded as killed for reasons related to their work.
Brazil has seen dozens of independent journalism initiatives emerge in recent years, many of them launched with the proposal of innovating in terms of content and the ways it’s presented. One challenge facing most of these initiatives concerns financial sustainability: how to generate the income needed to improve journalistic quality, keeping content accessible to as many people as possible?
They got to work securing transmitter antenna and covering the windows of their newsrooms with plywood. Enough food and water were purchased to last for several days. Volunteers were called in to relieve exhausted employees when the time came that they couldn’t stay awake any longer, or had to attend to their own families and homes.
Employees from Honduran newspaper El Libertador found a message appearing to threaten its journalists in front of their offices on Sept. 21 in Tegucigalpa. This comes a month after newspaper director Johnny Lagos and his wife, Lurbin Yadira, also a journalist, survived a shooting.