WikiLeaks' latest information release -- The Global Intelligence Files -- has yet to produce any major stories, but what is noteworthy are the media outlets with which the whistleblower site partnered this time around. WikiLeaks cites 25 media collaborators, none of which were among the site's original partner publications -- which condemned WikiLeak's uncensored release of its entire cache of secret diplomatic cables in September 2011 -- calling attention to the wedge driven between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an
Guest post by Lise Olsen, Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) board member from 2007-2011, and director of IRE-Mexico from 1996-1998. Twenty leading journalists gathered in Mexico City on Friday, Feb. 18, to exchange information and discuss ways that Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) can continue to help reporters who, under pressure and often at great personal risk, continue to do investigative reporting on U.S.-Mexico border topics such as children victimized by cartel violence, wasteful government spendi
On Feb. 17th, more than 300 newsroom employees of the Philadelphia Media Network (PMN) signed a statement demanding that the journalistic integrity of their work be upheld as the network negotiates its sale with private investor groups, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. The statement also expressed “dismay” that journalists’ coverage of the sale has been compromised and censored by corporate management, said Poynter and Politico.
Bolivia's National Press Association (ANP in Spanish) documented 200 cases of aggression against journalists in Bolivia in 2011, reported the news website Clases de Periodismo.
After international outcry, on Monday, Feb. 27, Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa announced his decision to pardon journalists in the $40 million libel suit against the newspaper El Universo, its three owners and a former newspaper columnist, who were facing three years in prison. The president also dismissed the fine against the authors of a book detailing the president's alleged acts of nepotism, reported the Associated Press.
Three journalists from a local television channel in Honduras received death threats for covering the prision fire which killed 350 inmates Feb. 14 in the city of Comayagua, in central Honduras, reported the Committee for Free Expression (C-Libre in Spanish).
As presidential elections in Venezuela approach, President Hugo Chavez on Saturday, March 24, criticized the alleged assaults on journalists of the state-run National System of Public Media committed by supporters of the opposition, according to the website for the Venezuelan National Assembly.
The Ecuadoran government announced that it would not comply with the request the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) made to suspend the libel sentences against the owners of the newspaper El Universo, Carlos, César and Nicolás Pérez, and former opinion page editor Emilio Palacio, calling the requested measures “inapplicable,” reported the NGO Fundamedios.
Lúcio Flávio Pinto, four-time winner of Brazil's most important journalism award, the Esso, said he would no longer appeal the libel lawsuit in which he was sentenced to pay roughly $4,600 in moral damages for articles accusing the owner of a company of landgrabbing in Pará, a region in northern Brazil, according to the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.
To avoid police aggression, reporters in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, work in groups when covering seizures, arrests and any other crime in this city on the U.S-Mexico border, now considered the second most violent in the world after spending three years in first place. “While one person speaks with officials, others are ready with their cameras to make public any incidents of aggression," explained Alfredo Quijano, editor of the local newspaper Norte, in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
On Friday, Feb. 17, a Venezuelan court began hearing the appeal of Globovisión to overturn a $2.1 million fine, according to the newspaper El Diario. The Globovisión television news agency has been critical of Hugo Chavez's government, and the fine was levied against the station in October of 2011 for its reporting.
The Dominican Journalism Guild (CDP in Spanish) proposed mandatory membership for journalists and penalizing journalists without university degrees with two years of prison and a fine of roughly $25,700, reported the newspapers El Nuevo Diario and Diario Libre.