The task in front of Ana María Ruelas, the new director of the Article 19 Mexico and Central America office, will not be simple. In what is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist, she leads a team that fights daily for basic freedoms for communicators: access to information, protection from bodily harm and guarantees to freely carry out their work.
In little more than 200 words, journalists from across Latin America are telling the stories of their neighbors in highly descriptive snapshots rarely seen in traditional news stories. This is the project called Somos Nosotros.
Update (July 1, 2016): The legal processes and hearings against the Brazilian newspaper Gazeta do Povo were temporarily suspended on June 30 by a judge of the Federal Supreme Court, Rosa Weber, according to O Estado de S. Paulo.
Salvador Olmos García, a 31-year-old community radio host, is dead after being run over by a police car in Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca on June 26.
Last week, Brazilian journalists released the campaign Journalists against Harassment in order to denounce cases of harassment against media professionals and to raise public awareness about the issue. The campaign was created after the firing of a reporter who had reported having suffered sexual harassment during an interview with a Brazilian musician.
La Nueva Provincia, one of the oldest and most traditional newspapers of Argentina that was recently renamed La Nueva, announced it will limit the circulation of its print edition to three days per week.
Journalist Álvaro Aceituno López, 65, was killed near his home in Coatepeque, Quetzaltenango in southwest Guatemala on June 25. He is the fifth journalist killed in Guatemala in the first six months of 2016, according to the Center for Informative Reports about Guatemala (Cerigua).
Theaters in the streets to relay information, chronicles in indigenous languages and unknown stories from rural communities that don’t appear on the traditional news agenda. This is what some digital native media outlets in Latin America are producing and promoting.
Media fragmentation in the digital environment carries risks for journalism and for citizens in democratic societies, warns Brazilian journalist Ricardo Gandour, director of content for Grupo Estado and visiting scholar at Columbia Journalism School.
In the face of threats from government officials and shortly after Juan Ramón Quintana, the Minister of the Presidency of Bolivia, labeled her as part of a “cartel of lies,” journalist Amalia Pando requested protection for her journalistic work before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) through a precautionary measure, according to news agency EFE.
Latin American journalists and editors gathered in Buenos Aires, Argentina earlier this month to share experiences and successful methods for producing a kind of investigative journalism that has been growing in the region: fact-checking.
Less than 24 hours after the death of a journalist in Oaxaca, a reporter in Tamaulipas state has been killed by a group of armed men. She is the eighth journalist killed in Mexico this year.