Reuters photographer Jorge Silva was attacked and arrested by United Nations security and Mexican federal police when covering a protest of environmentalists at the United Nations Climate CHange Conference, COP-16, in Cancun, Mexico, reported El Diario de Yucatán and El Universal.
Starting Dec. 14, Venezuela’s National Assembly will begin to work on reforming the Social Responsibility on Radio and Television Law to include internet services and digital media, El Impulso and Europa Press report.
The 2010 Jaime Brunet International Prize for Promotion of Human Rights has been awarded to the author of the blog Generation Y, Cuban journalist Yoani Sanchez, in recognition of her "valiant attitude" in defense of human rights on the island, reported EFE.
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA) released a statement calling on the authorities to guarantee the safety of press workers who are covering the recent conflicts in the Parque Indoamericano (American Indian Park) in Buenos Aires, which is currently occupied by at least 5,000 homeless squatters, many of them immigrants. FOPEA also asked media companies to prioritize the safety of their employees.
Between 1995 and August 2010, 258 journalists were killed — or kidnapped and assumed killed — in Latin America, but only 59 of those cases have been successfully prosecuted. These numbers from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) back up a new analysis from journalist Tyler Bridges who in his report referred to the “worst wave of violence against journalists ever in Latin America." This is the setting which prompted IAPA to develop the Impunity Project.
The Mexican government, media outlets on both sides of the border, and press organizations must do more to end danger faced by the press on Mexico’s northern border from drug-trafficking violence and impunity.
President-elect Dilma Rousseff said the only control on the media should be a TV's “remote control,” O Estado de S. Paulo reports. The remarks were seen as a signal that Rousseff would not send a media bill to congress with provisions that regulate radio and TV content.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva harshly criticized the arrest of Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website that has been releasing a cache of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables. According to Terra, the president if the first international leader to speak out against the arrest of Assange, who was wanted on rape charges in Sweden. “The guy was only publishing that which he read. And if he read it, it's because someone else wrote it. The blame doesn't belong to who released it, the blame is with who
In a ruling referring to the so-called “petro-audio”, the Constitutional Court of Peru said newspapers, radios and television stations cannot make public recordings of phone calls that were illegally obtained, reported El Comercio.
The Brazilian government is preparing the first version of a bill to establish a new regulatory framework for telecommunications, which includes a new National Communications Agency (Agência Nacional de Comunicação – ANC) with the power to regulate radio and TV content, Folha de S. Paulo reports.
At least a fifth of Globovisión - a channel that is critical of President Hugo Chávez’s administration - is now the hands of the government after Venezuela took over a financial company with a significant stake in the network, Bloomberg reports.
The Bolivian government has rejected a proposal to modify two controversial parts of the recently passed anti-racism law that critics say violate freedom of expression, Los Tiempos reports. The petition was written by four press groups who gathered at least 32,000 signatures in support of reforming the law.