The Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (Abraji in Portuguese) registered 21 cases of violations against 20 journalists during the protests on Saturday, Sept. 7. Police agents were behind 85% of the attacks -- or 18 cases -- most of which involved the use of pepper spray. The number may increase as more cases are confirmed.
A man involved in the attempted murder of the founder and former editor of the Mexican magazine Zeta was absolved of the charges Thursday.
Brazilian investigative reporter Mauro König, Colombian magazine Semana’s editor-in-chief Alejandro Rubino Santos and U.S. journalists Jon Lee Anderson and Donna DeCesare, both of whom have focused on covering Latin America for several decades, are the four journalists who will receive this year’s prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Prize.
A Brazilian court has prohibited Diario de Pernambuco and Jornal do Commercio, two of the largest newspapers in the state of Pernambuco, from mentioning the name or show pictures of the president of the state’s Legislative Assembly, Guilherme Uchoa, news portal Terra reported. The decision also applies to Brazilian station TV Clube.
A group of 60 persons -- among them journalists, politicians, writers and former Ecuadorian legislators -- have filed a new lawsuit before the Constitutional Court with the goal of revoking the country's controversial communications law, representing the second attempt to strike down the law through the courts.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the arrest of four independent journalists in Mexico City on Sunday Sept. 1 while they covered a protest against the education reform proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
O Globo, one of Brazil's leading newspapers, penned a historic editorial last Saturday Aug. 31 calling its support for the April 1, 1964 coup that deposed then President João Goulart "a mistake." O Globo, in reference to the June protests across the country that often brought up the newspaper's past relationship to the authoritarian regime, admitted “the hard truth” of its support and billed its change of heart as a response to the “clamor from the street.”
The current shortage of newsprint in Venezuela has caused a crisis among print publications that is hurting regional newspapers the most. According to El País, at least three regional dailies have been forced to suspend their operations since early August due to the lack of printing paper. Some of the affected newspapers have circulated for decades, like El Sol, in the city of Maturín, in the state of Monagas, and Antorcha, in El Tigre, in the state of Anzoátegui.
Following the purchase of 54% of the shares of the printing and marketing branch of Empresa Periodística Nacional S.A. ( Epensa in Spanish), publishing company El Comercio has become the largest media owner in the country. Will the move have an impact on journalism and freedom of expression in Peru?
Two daily newspapers in Mexico have created their own cable television news channels to compete against the limited coverage that Mexico's network duopoly provide the country on broadcast television. Starting on Sept. 2, Excélsior, the oldest paper in Mexico, will begin broadcasting a 24 hour news channel under its brand using its own reporters.
A court in Paraná state, located in the south of Brazil, prohibited the newspaper Gazeta do Povo from publishing information about the ongoing investigations against the head judge of the State Supreme Court, appellate judge Clayton Camargo, in yet another case of judicial censorship in Brazil, reported the newspaper Zero Hora.
The press corps in Guatemala denounced new acts of agression against reporters in the country. The daily newspaper Siglo 21 claimed that indigenous reporter Lucrecia Mateo was assaulted on Sunday, Aug. 25, when she tried to cover a meeting about the installation of a hydroelectric dam in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetango. A group of opposition protesters beat the reporter and robbed her camera equipment, according to the news agency AFP.