The Colombian Federation of Journalists (FECOLPER) called the closure of the newspaper El Liberal in the city of Popayán, Cauca on Saturday, Dec. 15, a blow to freedom of expression. The loss of the newspaper will leave the region hardest hit by unemployment, poverty and armed conflict without a newspaper, according to a statement from the organization.
Reporters for Gazeta da Povo, the newspaper of record in Paraná state, Brazil, were threatened with a supposed attack, according to reports from the publication. On Monday, Dec. 17, the newsroom and the management of the newspaper received threatening telephone calls warning about a possible attack.
Journalists unions in Bolivia rejected the Life and Disability Insurance Law for Press Workers enacted by President Evo Morales on Monday, Dec. 10, reported the website Los Tiempos. The proposed insurance would be paid for with one percent of the monthly total gross revenue of public and private media organizations and managed by a board with majority State representation, added the website.
The Panamanian newspaper La Estrella reported a cyberattack on its website on Wednesday, Dec. 12, according to the publication.
The anti-censorship website from Reporters Without Borders, We Fight Censorship, recently highlighted the case of Cuban journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, who was jailed in September, 2012, by authorities after he published a series of articles about a health crisis on the island. The website published the articles that led to his arrest and two telephone conversations offering a rare look into the prison's harsh conditions from the inside.
As part of a money laundering case against 18 Mexicans who impersonated journalists for the Televisa television network in Nicaragua, Judge Edgard Altamirano allowed the phone records of the supposed leader of the group, Raquel Alatorre Correa, to be admitted as evidence, according to the website Sin Embargo.
Unknown men broke into the home of Chilean journalist Mauricio Weibel on Dec. 15 and stole his laptop, in which he kept his investigation on the armed forces' secret services during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, informed Reporters Without Borders.
The Harvard University Nieman Fellows selected Mexican journalist Marcela Turati as the winner of the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, the organization announced on Thursday, Dec. 13.
O Comitê pela Livre Expressão, o C-Libre, denunciou que uma empresa de rádio de Honduras censurou, sem justificativa, um spot feito pela organização para defender a democratização do espectro radioelétrico.
A Cuban journalist in prison is the only one from Latin America that appears in the Committee to Protect Journalists' list of journalists incarcerated in 2012. However, the list does not include another Cuban journalist who was sentenced to 14 years in prison on espionage charges.
The Committee for Free Expression, or C-Libre, claimed that a radio station in Honduras censored without explanation a radio spot it paid for advocating the democratization of the broadcast spectrum.
The Institute for Press and Society, IPYS, described a recent change in the legislative decree that regulates the National Defense System as a "serious attack" on the right to access information, freedom of expression and transparency.