Journalists in Haiti critical of the government constantly face intimidation and are blocked access to official sources, according to a recent report from the University of San Francisco’s School of Law and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
Tico Times editor David Boddiger could already see the writing on the wall by the time he joined the newspaper two years ago.
The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras reported that a Honduran journalist and spokeswoman for a peasant organization received death threats, according to the Mexican news agency Notimex.
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) executive director Joel Simon testified at a briefing on press freedom in Latin America that violence and legal harassment are the biggest obstacles journalists face in the region, according to CPJ’s website.
After a series of increasingly aggressive threats from an ex-commander of the Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar (ROTA in Portuguese), an arm of the São Paulo Military Police, the newspaper Folha de São Paulo moved its reporter André Caramante to an undisclosed location for his security, reported the newspaper Brasil de Fato.
Venezuela's presidential election will take place next Sunday, Oct. 7. In this period of the campaign, the media landscape in the country is polarized between supporters of President Hugo Chávez and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. An analysis from BBC revealed that while the Venezuelan government has built a media empire of five public broadcasters, the state-run channels have only a slim 5.4 percent of the audience share, according to an investigation by AGB Panamericana.
The newspaper Diário de Natal, which circulates in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, announced the end of its print edition on Tuesday, Oct. 2, reported the news website No Minuto. In a statement, the newspaper's management said the newspaper would transition to an online-only format and that it would "prioritize and amplify the electronic version."
A journalist from Ecuador was threatened by two men who burst into his newsroom on Sept. 23, reported the Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios. Reporter Alejandro Escudero works for the weekly Independiente in the city of Nueva Loja, a northeastern province in Sucumbíos, the organization said.
A Colombian journalist claimed that criminal gangs he reported on were planning to kill him, reported the newspaper El Meridiano de Sucre.
A Guatemalan columnist received death threats against her and her family after denouncing the sexual abuse of girls in a cotton plantation, Cerigua reported.
The Information Safety bill that is currently being considered by Panama’s National Assembly could represent a threat to freedom of expression in that country, according to several journalists’ unions and associations, the newspaper La Estrella reported.
Documents found by police in Nicaragua contain the name of a top executive with Mexico’s media giant Televisa in a recent money laundering scandal involving the two countries, according to the radio network Noticias MVS.