Journalist Richard Romero was arrested July 18 in La Paz, Bolivia for allegedly committing “desacato” or “disrespect” by selling videos of a documentary he made that offended President Evo Morales, Los Tiempos reports.
Brazil’s federal police are investigating TV Tem, a Rede Globo affiliate in the city of São José do Rio Preto, for allegedly broadcasting confidential police recordings, Folha de S. Paulo reports.
In front of a police station in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, two Brazilian journalists were attacked while attempting to interview a doctor under investigation for the death of a university student, Diário Web reports.
On July 14, journalist Fábio Roberto was attacked as he left the offices of Radio Bahiana in Ilhéus, Bahia, where he hosts an opinion show on which he often airs corruption allegations, Vi o Mundo reports.
Sport reporter Juan Pastén was arrested July 14 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia over a year-old defamation suit brought against the journalist by the president of the National Football Association (ANF), Jorge Justiniano, Los Tiempos reports.
The director of the Honduran station Radio Joconguera, Nery Orellana, was shot to death Thursday, July 14, on a road in the Honduran town of Candelaria, on the border with El Salvador, reported La Prensa. Orellana, 26 years old, is the fourth journalist killed in Honduras this year, after the killings of journalists Adán Benítez, Francisco Medina Polanco, and Luis Mendoza, owner of television station Canal 24.
Article 19, the freedom of expression defense organization, decried the cyber attack on three digital newspapers in Mexico that not only were temporarily forced offline, but also had personal information, contacts and reporters' notes stolen from the server, in the case of Expediente Quintana Roo.
Journalist Cristina Guimarães, who, along with Tim Lopes, won the Esso Journalism Prize for the series "Drug Fair," accused Brazil's TV Globo of not adequately protecting Lopes, who was killed in 2002 after receiving threats from drug traffickers in Río de Janeiro, reported the newspaper Jornal do Brasil.
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has announced that Congress will consider a new media regulation law that will help fight "ink assassins," as he refers to opposition journalists, and that will be the "best legacy" of his administration, reported Fundamedios.
The Supreme Court of Peru sent a bill to Congress that would imprison those who distribute recordings of private conversations obtained by illegal telephone wiretaps, Perú21 reports. Freedom of expression groups said the bill was an attempt to restrict press freedom and weaken the tools used to watchdog the authorities, Diario Ya explains.
In a July 12 ceremony in Washington, D.C., Brazil and the United States outlined a new multilateral initiative, the "Open Government Partnership" (OGP), which aims to find ways to combat corruption and promote transparency, according to a U.S. State Department statement and the newspaper O Globo.
The Associated Press (AP) severed ties with a freelance photographer after he manipulated a photo of children playing soccer near the town of Mendoza, Argentina, in order to eliminate his shadow from the image, according to a July 11 memo from AP director of photography Santiago Lyon, reported Poynter.org.