This past weekend, Guatemala’s highest elected officials, President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti withdrew two criminal complaints they filed in December – one for blackmail and contempt, the other for violence against women – against José Rubén Zamora, editor of the newspaper elPeriódico.
Three radio journalists in Guaviare, Colombia recently received death threats in response to their reporting on an upcoming vote that may remove the local governor from office. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Erika Londoño, Gustavo Chicangana and Jorge Ramírez received the threats via multiple text messages sent to Londoño's phone.
After the purchase of more than half of editorial group Epensa's shares, which gave Grupo El Comercio control over almost 80 percent of the newspaper market in Peru, the topic of media concentration has become ubiquitous -- and volatile -- in the country. It dominates the public debate with virtually a new article or opinion piece every day, and last week, the opposing sides of the debate over the potential negative effects of the transaction were illustrated by the disagreement between award-winning Peruvian writer and for
Last week the website Clases de Periodismo published a free guide in Spanish for journalists and communicators interested in social media management.
The Forum for Argentine Journalism (FOPEA) condemned last week a string of massive layoffs in media outlets that have taken place all throughout December and January. The outlets have argued the layoffs are part of internal reorganizations but FOPEA cited possible political retaliation as a motive prompting some of the decisions.
A group of journalists covering the expansion of vigilante groups in the Mexican state of Michoacán became stranded in a local town after being caught in crossfire this weekend, reported freedom of expression organization Article 19.
Argentinean police officers are being accused of detaining, beating and threatening an independent photographer who was covering a violent protest in a Buenos Aires municipality last month.
A court ordered Guatemalan journalist and director of newspaper elPeriódico José Rubén Zamora Marroquín not to leave the country. His bank accounts were also frozen.
With 174 documented aggressions against media outlets, journalists and citizens, 2013 was one of the most violent years against freedom of expression in Ecuador, according to a recent report from NGO Fundamedios.
The director of Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora, wrote in a recent opinion article that he will not pay a fine of 500 quetzales (about $63) – under the penalty of going to prison for disobedience – after defying a recent judicial order that bars him from "disturbing or intimidating" the country's vice president, Ingrid Roxanna Baldetti.
An armed group broke into the home of Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández late last year, news magazine Proceso reported.
Mike O’Connor, a veteran war correspondent who spent the last five years advocating for journalists’ safety in Mexico for the Committee to Protect Journalists, died of a heart attack on Dec. 29. He was 67.