As the end of the year nears, two more journalists were killed in Brazil and Colombia in the past week.
At a conference in Bogotá, Colombia, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Edison Lanza, talked with representatives of various international organizations concerned with media concentration in the Americas.
“It always reminds us that it is not sleeping,” said María Martin, a veteran radio journalist honored on Nov. 19 at the University of Texas at Austin for her forty years in public radio and many years of work in Latin America to train journalists.
GlobalGirl Media (GGM), a U.S.-based organization dedicated to the empowerment of young women through the media, is fundraising for a new initiative in São Paulo, Brazil. The program focuses on the links between sexuality and technology and aims to provide girls with a channel for voicing their opinions through journalism and other media.
From Nov. 18 to 19, international experts are meeting in Bogota, Colombia to discuss the situation of the media, legislation, ownership concentration and/or control and the impact on freedom of expression and the exercise of journalism.
Two people on a motorcycle fatally shot 30-year-old Brazilian blogger Ítalo Eduardo Diniz Barros on Nov. 13 in Governador Nunes Freire in Maranhão state. A friend with Diniz was also shot, but survived, according to G1.
Former mayor Vilmar Acosta arrived in Asunción - Paraguay's capital - Tuesday Nov. 17 after Brazil approved his extradition. He now will have to answer for the murder of journalist Pablo Medina, according to Reuters. The journalist’s assistant, Antonia Almada, was also killed in the attack targeting the reporter.
Juliana Barbassa, graduate of the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism, returned to campus on Nov. 16 to speak to a group of students and professors about her new book Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink.
Journalist David Romero could face up to eight years and four months in prison after being found guilty of defamation (injurias and calumnias). Yet, throughout the course of judicial proceedings, the director of Radio Globo has repeated accusations of prejudice and retaliation against him because of his journalistic work.
Early in the morning on Nov. 10, an unidentified man shot community radio journalist Israel Gonçalves Silva inside a store in Lagoa de Itaenga in Pernambuco state. The journalist had just dropped his children at school. Reports say the man fled via motorcycle without taking anything.
For five years, a group of young people from the periphery of São Paulo, under the supervision of journalist Izabela Moi, faced a challenge: portray their neighborhoods from an "insider’s view," with coverage that went beyond clichés about violence and welfare.
Flor Alba Núñez Vargas was only 25-years-old when she was fatally shot on the way to work on Sept. 10, 2015. Despite her youth, she simultaneously worked as a journalist at radio stations, television outlets and newspapers in Pitalito in the Huila department of southwest Colombia.