In just under two weeks, Colombian journalists have had to face one of their greatest fears: the resurgence of violence as a means to muzzle freedom of expression commonly used during the height of armed groups and drug traffickers.
A series of public spats between a journalists' union in Ecuador and the country's government continues a week after the United States ambassador participated in an event with journalists on World Press Freedom Day, Friday, May 3.
The Mexican newspaper El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo, one of the publications most effected by armed attacks on its reporters and offices, was recently the target of two cyberattacks on Sunday, May 12 that interrupted the website's service.
Hundreds of journalists and academics gathered this week in Natal, Brazil for the Second International Colloquium on Structural Changes in Journalism (or MEJOR, in Portuguese) to discuss the impact of new technologies on professional ethics and identities.
The news websites El Faro de El Salvador, Plaza Pública de Guatemala and Confidencial de Nicaragua are working on creating a consortium of Central American digital media outlets to cover the region.
On the evening of Wednesday, May 8, investigative reporter Lourenso Véras received threatening text messages saying that he was on a list of people to executed in the frontier region between Brazil and Paraguay.
Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, who has been threatened several times since 2010, could lose the armed escorts who have protected her for the last three years.
Two days after the sons of two Mexican journalists were shot dead in Chihuahua City, the state's governor, César Duarte announced that the motive for the crime was a drug debt of $825.
With the aim to broaden the debate on journalists' security, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, and the United Nations Information Center in Rio de Janeiro launched the website Segurança de Jornalistas (Journalists' Security in English) on May 3, World Press Freedom Day.
Internet use is growing rapidly in Latin America, and traditional media groups are exploring digital paid content strategies to try to protect and consolidate their dominant position, especially in the face of competition from new digital-only news organizations.
Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina signed the document establishing the Program to Protect Journalists, which will be preventative in nature and follows similar examples in Mexico and Colombia.
On World Press Freedom Day, several press freedom organizations underscored the preoccupying increase in attacks against media outlets and journalists around the world that made 2012 the deadliest year for journalists in the last decade.