The Mexican federal government will carry out an audit of all contracts given out to provide security to journalists and human rights advocates during the administration of former president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), according to the Campaign for Free Expression.
President of El Salvador Mauricio Funes has named the commissioners of the Public Information Access Institute after 15 months of delays, and 10 days after vetoing a reform that would have weakened the new body, said El Faro.
In what has become a historic decision, the Council of State of Colombia ordered the National Police to correct a statement given in 1996 that affected two businessmen, said the newspaper El Tiempo. The Director of the Police will have to give a press conference and correct the information given to a television news program as an “exclusive” that linked two businessmen with a drug cartel, said the paper.
On Saturday, Feb. 23, two gunmen shot and killed a Peruvian photojournalist for the newspaper El Comercio, reported the website Perú 21. The attack sparked debate about the public's security, the risks journalists run and how the media covers violence.
The Brazilian media company UH News was sentenced to pay over $7,500 in moral damages, according to the court's website.
A Mexican newspaper in the state of San Luis Potosí revealed an audio recording that supposedly catches the governor's spokesman telling his staff to create anonymous social media profiles to dispute inconvenient information, according to the newspaper Pulso de San Luis.
The only newspaper in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, the Penguin News, published a fake interview with Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman after the official refused to speak with the media, reported the newspaper La Nación.
While freedom of expression remains a fundamental right guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution, the court system has become an effective tool for crippling media organizations and silencing critical journalists and bloggers in the country. A timeline from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas shows that there were 16 cases of the courts being used to censor journalists in 2012 alone.
A Brazilian court ruled on Wednesday, Feb. 20, that the blog "Falha de São Paulo," a parody of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper will remain offline, reported Carta Capital.
Venezuela's Information Minister Ernesto Villegas announced on Wednesday, Feb. 20, the establishment of the new Bolivarian Communication and Information System, reported teleSUR. According to the minister, the new apparatus should generate content different from that found in a capitalist culture and strive for "true independence."
The Peruvian Public Defender filed a constitutional complaint against one of the articles in Legislative Decree 1129 on Feb. 15, which it claims violates the constitutional right to "access public information," reported the newspaper La República. Article 12 of the decree declares that all information related to national security and defense is classified, added the newspaper.
The second witness to the April 2012 murder of Brazilian journalist Décio Sá has died after being shot seven times during an attack in January, said the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.