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.
Already marked by polarization during the administration of Hugo Chávez, the media environment in Venezuela is now fueling political disputes following the troubled presidential election on April 14, between Chávez's appointed successor, Nicolás Maduro, and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
Three journalists were ejected from a Brazilian construction site where indigenous protesters have paralyzed work on a dam in the Brazilian state of Pará on Friday, May 3, 2013 World Press Freedom Day.
The sons of two Mexican journalists were shot and killed during an armed attack in Chihuhaua City early morning Sunday, news agency EFE reported.
The Central American University of El Salvador established a specialized security-training center for journalists with financial support from the United States government, reported the news agency Agence-France Presse.
Before 2005, crime news dominated the regional media in Chile, according to Paula Rojo, founder of the network of regional newspapers Mi Voz. That year, Rojo and her partner Jorge Domínguez Larraín launched an effort to recruit citizens, representatives from diverse political backgrounds and the social sector to become citizen reporters for their new newspaper.
Dignitaries, heads of states, journalists and advocates arrived in San José, Costa Rica yesterday, Thursday, May 2, for the welcoming reception of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s World Press Freedom Day conference.
With six countries listed without a free press, including three countries with some of the highest levels of impunity in the world for press crimes, Latin American freedom of expression is at its lowest levels since 1989.
Last month Donna DeCesare, an award-winning photojournalist and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, released her bilingual book Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs.
On Thursday, May 2, the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) published an open letter to United States President Barack Obama urging him to use his visit to Mexico this week to strike a firm commitment to protect freedom of expression and end impunity for press crimes in the troubled country.