Spanish journalist Judith Torrea, author of the blog Ciudad Juárez, en la Sombra del Narcotráfico (Ciudad Juárez, in the Shadow of Drug Trafficking), won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom award and was selected to be one of the 2011-12 International Knight Fellows.
Luciano Leitão Pedrosa was killed the night of April 9 in a restaurant in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, G1 reports. The journalist worked for Radio Metropolitana FM and hosted the program Action and Citizenship on TV Victoria, where he discussed criminal allegations and police issues.
The state of freedom of expression has deteriorated throughout the Americas, concluded delegates at the Mid-Year meeting of the Inter American Press Association, held April 6-9 in San Diego, Ca.
Venezuela’s National Journalism Guild (CNP) and the National Press Workers’ Syndicate (SNTP) denounced a series of threats to freedom of expression from President Hugo Chávez’s government, highlighting the increasing lack of access to public information and impunity for crimes against journalists, El Universal reports.
The Brazilian online site Journalists on the Web has published a virtual interactive map with information about urban massacres -- particularly in schools -- from around the world. The map was launched one day after the April 7 school shooting in Río de Janeiro, in which 12 people died.
The international citizen media network Global Voices has chosen Friends of Januária (Asajan), based in the small city of the same name, as one its newest “Rising Voices” grantees for its work against corruption.
Dissident Cuban journalist Albert Santiago Du Bouchet, who had been in jail since 2009 for defamation, was freed by the Cuban authorities and exiled to Spain, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports. The government had already released the journalists who were among the 52 dissidents jailed during the 2003 “Black Spring” crackdown.
Enrique Hernández Padrón and Graciela Castañón Aguilar, former reporters for El Portal in the central Mexican city of San Luis Potosí, say they were fired under pressure from the state government to keep from losing advertising money, Mexico’s National Social Communication Center (CENCOS) reports.
The newest edition of ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America, is dedicated to journalism in the Americas, with stories by renowned journalists focusing on such topics as the dangers of reporting in Mexico, the possibilities of incorporating new digital technologies, censorship and threats to freedom of expression.
Two U.S. journalists are among four foreign correspondents captured by the Libyan military earlier this week, reported USA Today. A Spanish photographer and South African photographer also are being held.
Thousands demonstrated in the streets of Mexico’s biggest cities against the wave of drug trafficking violence that has left 35,000 dead since 2006. The protests were organized by writer and journalist Javier Sicilla, whose son was one of seven people killed this week in the city of Cuernavaca, Mileno and CDN report.
El Nacional newspaper reports that two of its journalists were arrested by the police while covering a protest by flood victims in the capital city of Caracas.