The United States announced at its Mexican embassy that it will donate $5 million to improve the safety of journalists in the country over the next four years, reported CNN Mexico on Jan. 11.
Honduran independent journalist and human rights activist Itsmania Pineda Platero reported that she has been receiving constant death threats over the phone, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The Ecuadoran Attorney General and judicial police seized transmission equipment and closed the radio station Perla Orense on Jan. 7, in the southwestern El Oro province, reported Fundamedios.
Opinion pieces written by Brazilian journalist José Marcondes have made him the target of lawsuits from businessman Aldo Locatelli and Senator Pedro Taques in the state of Mato Grosso, reported Mídia News.
After the prime suspect behind the conspiracy to kill a Paraguayan journalist was freed on Dec. 31, 2011, the crime's perpetrators are now soliciting their own release on Jan. 10, reported the newspaper Vanguardia.
A Florida man was arrested last month for operating an illegal community radio station, according to NBC-2. Al Knighten, who faces a felony charge for unauthorized radio transmission and up to five years in prison, skipped his arraignment Monday, Jan. 9, to share the radio station's story at the Civil Rights on the Airwaves forum in Washington, D.C., reported the Ft. Myers News-Press.
More than 20 armed police officers searched the offices of a private television station in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago on Jan. 1, according to the International Press Institute (IPI).
One-third of U.S. owners of smartphones or tablet computers said they had downloaded news apps in the previous 30 days, according to newly released results from a Nielson survey. Still, news apps came in fifth, behind games, maps/navigation, music, and social networking apps.
One year after the Jan. 8 shooting in Arizona that prompted NPR and other media outlets to incorrectly report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been killed, Poynter looks back at how so many journalists got it wrong. Poynter even named the false reports of Giffords' death the worst error of 2011.
Despite Peruvian President Ollanta Humala's campaign promise to decriminalize press crimes, the number of jail and probation sentences against journalists continue to rise in the Andean nation, Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) claimed on Jan. 5.
Brazilian television broadcaster Rede TV! broke its contract with journalist Rita Lisauskas on Jan. 5, 2012 for "revealing proprietary information about the channel," according to the column Zapping in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. In December 2011, the anchor for the television news magazine "Rede TV! News" was suspended after she complained on her Facebook page about late salary payments at the broadcaster, reported the newspaper O Jornal.
The Colombian magazine Semana warned that a proposal backed by the Venezuelan and Ecuadorean governments is aimed at weakening the Organization for American States' (OAS) Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression.