The United States and Cuba are at opposite extremes of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2012 report. According to the New York-based organization, the United States was ranked the second most “free” country in the world for online expression, while Cuba was listed as the second to worst.
Police arrested a Mexican journalist for recording a confrontation after an election from the window of his hotel room in the city of Motozintla, Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, reported the news agency ANSA.
Brazilian reporter Patrícia Cornils got a surprising response after sharing on Facebook a Google Docs worksheet listing fires in the favelas of São Paulo. Several people joined the collaborative reporting project that became Fogo no Barraco (Fire in the Shanty), an interactive map that cross references data on fires with real estate appreciation near the affected areas. The map demonstrates the journalistic possibilities of online collaboration and crowdsourcing information.
Ecuador's Electoral Court (TCE in Spanish) sentenced a magazine to pay $80,000 for publishing an editorial on Sept. 26, reported the newspaper El Universo.
Costa Rica’s oldest English-language newspaper, The Tico Times, announced on its website that it would stop publishing its print edition as of Friday, Sept. 28. The Associated Press reported that the 56-year-old newspaper laid off its entire 16-person staff on Tuesday, Sept. 25, and will restructure its business into an online-only publication.
The Attorney General of Colombia announced on Sept. 26 that it would take preventative measures to protect the fundamental rights of 10 threatened journalists who interviewed an ex-paramilitary leader, reported Caracol Radio.
An Ecuadorian journalist was denied entrance into a press meeting with the country's President, Rafael Correa, at the Teleradio Noticias station after the Secretary of Communication complained that his questions could make some officials uncomfortable, reported Fundamedios.
Following threats against his life, another journalist from Veracruz, Mexico has decided to seek asylum abroad, reported the Foundation for Freedom of Expression.
As Televisa continues to deny any connection between the television broadcaster and a money laundering ring in Nicaragua, a prosecutor in the Central American country said that some of the suspects, arrested while impersonating reporters, supposedly called the broadcaster shortly before they were apprehended.
During an address to students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner told the audience "there is no independent and objective press" in Argentina, according to Multimedios Prisma.
At least 15 journalists have fled Mexico seeking asylum abroad, according to an interview with Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) Mexico representative Balbina Flores on Radio Fórmula.
The judge that ordered the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo to remove a blog post about a mayoral candidate in the Brazilian city Macapá, Amapá rescinded the decision to censor the post on Wednesday evening, Sept. 25.