A court temporarily stayed a libel and slander case against Grisel Bethancourt, the president of Panama's National Journalism Guild (CONAPE), over an article with judicial information about the slaying of a girl, TVN News reported.
Journalist Yolanda Orda, who had been missing for 48 hours, was found dead in Veracruz, Mexico, July 26, the Associated Press reports. Ordaz, who covered police issues for Notiver – one of the most important dailies in the region – is the second journalist from the paper to be killed in the last five weeks and the seventh Mexican journalist killed in 2011.
While violence against the press in Paraguay is nowhere near the levels found in Mexico, Honduras, or Colombia, journalists in the country have little support and face daily risks, especially those in border regions controlled by international smuggling gangs, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) writes in its report “Journalists alone facing trafficking."
A bill in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies would require media companies to provide life and disability insurance for journalists working in dangerous areas, Agência Câmara reports.
Peru’s Congress has passed a bill replacing prison time for defamation and libel offenses with fines and community service, Perú.com reports. The change was passed June 21, but it still needs the president’s signature to become law.
On July 20, a group of journalists in the northeast Brazilian state of Paraíba sent an open letter to the state’s Brazilian Bar Association section (OAB/PB) and the Paraiba Press Association, in which they allege persecution and freedom of expression violations by regional authorities, Paraíba 1 reports.
Every day dozens of celebrities worldwide are hounded by the press for scoops on things like alleged plastic surgeries, pregnancies, or their romantic lives. A member of Chile’s House of Deputies, inspired by recent press harassment faced by a former beauty queen, believes that journalists have gone too far and that their behavior needs to be reined in.
Journalist Jaime Quispe, the director of Jornada newspaper in Ayacucho, Peru, received a death threat the same day he published an article about political pressure to release a regional politician’s imprisoned brother, whom he accused of being a member of a blackmail gang, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports.
The directors of El Universo newspaper in Ecuador announced that the newspaper would continue circulating and reporting, in spite of the July 20 ruling that sentenced the paper, its directors, and an editor to $40 million in damages and three years in prison.
Political journalist Auro Ida, 53, was shot to death the morning of July 22 in front of his girlfriend’s house in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, G1 reports.
The National Board of Elections (JNE), Peru’s highest electoral authority, has presented a formal complaint against Uri Ben Schmuel, the director of La Razón newspaper, for not including the complete datasheet of a poll published in the paper, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports.
In the midst of the bribery and phone-hacking scandal involving CEO Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., media analysts continue to debate the ethical challenges of reporting. Are their limits to what a journalist should do in the search for a scoop?