Bolivia’s National Association of the Press denounced restrictions from a new campaign rule, saying the regulation impeded journalists’ ability to effectively cover the Andean country’s first judicial elections held Oct. 16, reported IFEX.
Honduran journalist Karla Rivas became the first woman honored with the 2011 Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism awarded by Reporters Without Borders and the Global Media Forum on Oct. 20, announced the organizations.
The Press and Society Institute (IPYS) is offering 15 investigative journalism scholarships to reporters from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 31, 2011.
The Inter American Press Association's (IAPA) 67th General Assembly in Lima, Peru, ended with the organization issuing a series of resolutions and conclusions highlighting the fact that "attempts to silence the independent press" in Latin America have continued to mount in 2011, as evidenced by the rampant "physical violence, the murder of journalists and the impunity of these crimes, lawsuits, arbitrary arrests, verbal abuse, and the manipulation of government advertising to laws or restrictive bills."
Journalist Wilson Cabrera, whose community radio station was closed by the Ecuadorian government, was prohibited from traveling to the United States by judicial order, reported the newspaper El Universo.
The Venezuelan National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) ordered the television channel Globovisión, known for its critical editorial stance toward President Hugo Chávez's government, to pay a nearly $2 million fine, reported the news agency EFE.
The journalist Juan Carlos Calderon, co author of the book El Gran Hermano (Big Brother), was threatened via telephone by an anonymous source, according to Fundamedios. The journalist was threatened: “You will be next.”
A Brazilian photographer was arrested after refusing to delete photos of police attacking two young people participating in a gay pride parade on Oct. 16, in the city of Itabuna, Bahia, reported the newspaper Correio 24 horas.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) expressed concern about possible attacks by Chilean security forces against freedom of information on the eve of more student protests on Oct. 18.
The first time my wife sent me a Facebook IM asking if I wanted to go out for lunch, I realized – with some hesitant nostalgia – that we were about to cross another threshold into the age of digital communication. I was sitting at my computer in my home office and my wife was 20 feet away, sitting on the couch with her laptop. I could have (and perhaps should have) turned to her and nodded “yes, dear, let’s go hunt for sandwiches,” but instead I dutifully took the plunge with her into the next level of cyberdom by
About 200 neighbors and employees are standing watch night and day at the offices of a TV news station in the city of El Alto (on the outskirts of the Bolivian capital of La Paz) after a labor union threatened to physically seize the station, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The Chilean Association of Foreign Correspondents issued a formal complaint against the Chilean police for kidnapping and attacking journalists on Friday, Oct. 14, reported the newspaper El Comercio. This is the first accusation of kidnapping and targeting of journalists by the police since the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, reported the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.