The Organization of American States' special rapporteur for Freedom of Expression released a statement in which it “express[ed] its deepest concern for the deterioration of the right to freedom of expression in Venezuela.”
On Sept. 18, Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes signed the country’s first freedom of information (FOI) law, making it the 100th country in the world to pass similar legislation.
In the aftermath of the severe beating of a young journalist, a police chief is on the run and journalists are rallying for protection of freedom of expression across Mexico.
Venezuela’s oldest daily newspaper, El Impulso, is the latest publication to narrowly avert a shutdown amid an ongoing newsprint (paper) shortage that has affected nearly 40 newspapers and magazines across the country over the past year.
On September 13, the Guatemalan government posted photographs of an unpublished article planned to run three days later on the newspaper elPeriódico, raising questions as to whether or not the government had been spying on the newsroom.
Mainstream media coverage of Brazilian protests in June, 2013, both on websites and Twitter, highlighted riots and acts of vandalism, rather than demands made by protestors, according to a University of Texas researcher. The findings, which shed light on the role of media in the portrayal of protests, were presented at the 2014 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Montreal, Canada.
In a saturated and rapidly evolving digital media landscape, discerning truth from fallacy has proven to be a challenge for readers, especially in the case of government discourse. In response to a growing demand for trustworthy and accurate news, the practice of fact-checking has emerged as a practice that allows journalists to hold public officials accountable for their statements.
The criminal investigation of Peru’s Minister of the Interior for the death of a journalist in 1988 serves as a reminder that the Andean nation still lives and deals with the effects of an internal war that ravaged the country in the late twentieth century.
The ability to cope with a disruptive environment and an awareness of new technological resources are key skills for the 21st century journalist. This was the lesson highlighted by a group of eight students who participated in a recent Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, through the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. The students won scholarships to attend the 10th Brazilian Congress of Newspapers (CBJ by its initials in Portuguese) and visit the facilities of Google Brasil.
As part of its series of occasional e-books, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas just launched “Transparency and Accountability: Journalism and access to public information in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
A leading Venezuelan newspaper that was recently sold to anonymous investors appears to be shifting its opposition editorial line weeks after pledging not to. The managing editor at El Universal, Elides Rojas, told the International Press Institute (IPI) that the newspaper’s new president had “ordered a complete revision of the opinion section” and had suspended or dismissed editorial staff.
As if the dangers of covering crime in one of the riskiest regions of the world for journalists weren’t enough, reporters in Northern Mexico now face new obstacles allegedly created by the authorities who were supposed to protect them.