The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its annual Impunity Index, which ranks three Latin American countries among those where killers of journalist regularly escape justice, The Associated Press reports.
A bill that would criminalize leaking or publishing information on confidential criminal investigations and trials passed committee in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies May 31, O Globo reports.
The Mexican police found the body of journalist Noel López Olguín in a clandestine grave in Chinameca, Veracruz, The Associated Press and Milenio report. The journalist disappeared March 8, presumably kidnapped by drug traffickers.
Representatives from the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights signed the "Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet", a document that urges governments not to limit freedom of expression online, reported EFE.
Reporters Pablo Hernández and Ismael Villagómez of the Mexican newspaper Norte were arrested by city police while covering a police raid on pirated merchandise, according to Norte Digital. The police attacked the journalists, calling them "nosy," reported El Mexicano. Agents also arrested Univisión reporter Luis Escalera, added Tiempo.
Paraguayan journalist and radio announcer in Ciudad del Este, Carlos Bottino, has filed suit against the governor of Alto Paraná, Nelson Aguinagalde, accusing him of threatening the journalist with death, reported Última Hora.
In response to government attempts to approve laws regulating the press, the Brazilian National Association of Newspapers (ANJ in Portuguese) launched on May 26 a self-regulation program, reported Folha de S. Paulo.
Brazilian senator Delcídio do Amaral, elected by the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, is suing the news website Terra and reporter Italo Milhomem Santos for roughly $63,000 for publishing supposedly untrue information, according to Portal Imprensa.
A judge in the Dominican Republic has ordered TV reporter José Agustin Silvestre de los Santos held on $5,250 bail pending a trial for allegedly defaming a La Romana prosecutor in a report accusing the official of ties to drug trafficking, Diario Libre reports.
Journalists from Argentine media outlets like Clarín, La Nación, Perfil, Telefé, TN, DyN, El Trece and others were thrown out of an event organized by the association Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, reported Clarín. A woman with the organization of mothers whose children were disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War, told a photographer with Clarín: "These are the rules of the game, you are not welcome here."
Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa canceled his column in the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio in protest of its "information manipulation" during the ongoing presidential election campaign, according to the news agency EFE. The protest is part of various critiques against the newspaper for supporting candidate Keiko Fujimori and for its impartial election coverage.
A grenade was launched against the offices of the newspaper Vanguardia, in Saltillo, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. No one was injured, but the newspaper suffered material damages, according to CNN México.