"Long live free press!" said the Chilean president, Sebastian Piñera, Monday, Feb. 13, on his Twitter account to commemorate Chile's journalism day, according to the news agency Emol. "A salute to the Chilean journalists and press on their national day," added Piñera via Twitter.
After accusations of skewed coverage of the security forces strike in Río de Janeiro favoring the government, on Sunday, Feb. 12, a news team from TV Globo was harassed and thrown out of a protest of firefighters and military police in the neighborhood of Copacabana, reported the news portal Terra and newspaper Jornal do Brasil.
While trying to cover anti-mining protests in the province of Catamarca in Argentina, journalists were denied access to the area, showing a deterioration in freedom of expression, said the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA in Spanish). FOPEA also said that several protesters and journalists were detained and harassed.
From a jail in the United States, former Colombian paramilitary commander Diego Fernando Murillo, alias "Don Berna," accused two ex-members of the Colombian national military of being responsible for the killing of journalist and comedian Jaime Garzón on Aug. 13, 1999, reported Caracol Radio.
National and international journalism associations denounced the attack that killed Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues, known as Paulo Rocaro, in the early hours Monday, Feb. 13, in Ponta Porã, Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border with Paraguay. Rocaro was editor in chief of the newspaper Jornal da Praça and of the news site Merco Sul News, where he frequently wrote about politics and drug trafficking.
Just weeks after launching NewsRight, a company aimed at monitoring the unauthorized use of copyrighted material, on Tuesday, Feb. 14, the Associated Press (AP) sued Meltwater News for copyright infringement and “hot news” misappropriation, the AP said in a statement.
Two days after the killing of a Brazilian political journalist in the state of Río de Janeiro, Brazilian reporter Jorge Estevão received a death threat from an unknown person who pointed a gun at him early in the morning of Saturday, Feb. 11, in Cuiabá, the capital city of the state of Mato Grosso, reported HiperNotícias.
A Mexican congressman has proposed a law to regulate news coverage about the arrests of organized crime suspects, according to the official state news agency Notimex.
Pinterest, the social media curating site that allows users to "'pin' (bookmark) things you like -- photos, recipes, crafts, design ideas, photography, art, etc., and silo those items into 'boards,'" as MediaShift described it, might just be the next big thing for journalism, as cliché as that sounds. After all, TechCrunch just reported on Tuesday, Feb. 7, that Pinterest gets 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, having hit the 10-million mark faster than any other standalone site ever. And as Poynter pointed out, "
Community radio station, Ibicoara FM, was set on fire the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 8, in the city of Ibicoara, located in the Brazilian state of Bahía, reported the blog Minuto Notícias. The door of the station had been forced open, and all of the broadcast equipment was burned.
A Guatemalan reporter received death threats from a National Civil Police agent while trying to cover a vehicle accident, according to the Guatemalan Center for Informative Reports (Cerigua in Spanish).
Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues was shot to death during an attack the night of Sunday, Feb. 12, in Ponta Porã in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul on the border with Paraguay, reported Última Hora. Police suspect it was a hired killing.