Colombia started off 2013 with a series of attacks on the press, including death threats against three journalists, censorship at the hands of criminal gangs and the interrupted distribution of a newspaper in the department of Sucre, reported the Press Freedom Foundation, FLIP, in a press release Thursday, Jan. 31.
Brazilian photographer Jean Schwarz for the newspaper Zero Hora was beaten while he tried to cover a meeting of road workers in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, on Jan. 22, reported the publication.
The Attorney General of the Dominican Republic, Francisco Domínguez Brito, opened an investigation into a series of fake press releases sent to the media, according to the news agency UPI.
The Antioquia Journalism Association, APA, requested protection for some journalists in the city of Medellín, claiming that they are the targets of threats and harassment.
After more than 20 denied requests in the last five years, well-known Cuban blogger and activist Yoani Sánchez was granted on Wednesday a passport to travel abroad.
Mexico and Cuba were the worst places for journalists in the Americas, tensions between the government and privately-owned media continued to escalate in Ecuador and Argentina, and Canada lost its position as press freedom leader in the continent.
Lúcio Flávio Pinto, founder and lone reporter for the blog Jornal Pessoal, has won eight prizes, published 22 books and been sued 33 times for his work as a journalist. Pinto's experience is emblematic of judicial censorship in Brazil.
The Colombian newspaper El Meridiano de Sucre claimed that copies of its publication were burned on Tuesday, Jan 29, to prevent its distribution.
The Venezuelan government will sue newspaper El País – Spain’s largest newspaper – for the fake photo of President Hugo Chávez that it published last week, said Minister of Communication and Information Ernesto Villegas in an interview Sunday with public broadcaster TeleSUR.
Newspaper La Hora said last Friday the government of Ecuador is trying to censor its readers after the National Secretary of Communication, Patricio Barriga, sent a letter to the newspaper’s editor asking for an “effective filter” of reader comments.
A Costa Rican journalist avoided a libel lawsuit after retracting accusations she made against the brother of President Laura Chinchilla, Adrián Chinchilla, in an August 2012 article published in the newspaper La Nación.
Motivated by shared experiences with problems like organized crime or the environmental impacts of transnational projects, journalists in Latin America are establishing multi-national teams to investigate topics that stretch across borders.