Antônio Carlos Almeida Campelo, a judge in Brazil’s 4th Federal Civil Court in the northern state of Pará, issued an injunction blocking journalist Lúcio Flávio Pinto from publishing any information about a case against several business people in the state, Diário Online reports.
Organized crime, whether drug cartels, mafias or paramilitary forces, poses the greatest threat to journalists today, according to a new report released Thursday, Feb. 24, from Reporters Without Borders. In the last 10 years, 141 journalists have been killed for reporting on organized crime, the report said.
Freelance journalist and former Associated Press correspondent John Enders says that members of Venezuela's intelligence agency were harassing and attempting to intimidate him, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports via IFEX.
In the midst of a wave of violence against the media following the 2009 Honduran coup, which includes the death of 10 journalists, the government said it will create a special unit to investigate crimes against journalists, La Tribuna reports.
Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, the anchor of a news show on Televisa, was held for eight hours upon his arrival to Cairo, first by a group of civilian “vigilantes” and later by the army, which confiscated his cell phone, El Universal reports.
El Nuevo Diario newspaper journalist Luis Galeano told the police and several human rights groups that he received a phone call and a letter warning him that he would be killed, Notimex reports.
Carlos Santos, a journalist in Mossoró in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, was convicted to four months in prison for three blog posts that the city’s mayor found offensive, Mossoró Notícias reports. For each piece, he was sentenced to one month and ten days in prison and is required to donate approximately a total of $3,600 fines to charity.
Peruvian journalist Vicky Peláez, who was convicted of spying on the U.S. for Russian in June 2010, denied the charges and said she only pled guilty to win her freedom, Correo reports.
The founder and editor of Pura Política, João Andrade Neto, was arrested and accused of demanding money from business people in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia in exchange for not publishing allegations against them, Correio reports. He is being held on charges of extortion and attempted extortion.
El Diario de Juárez, a major newspaper in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez – one of the world’s most violent cities – won the 2011 award for journalistic excellence, organized by the Mexico branch of PEN International.
The site Midiamax, a digital newspaper in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, said in a message sent to the Brazilian Press Association (ABI in Portuguese) that it is being censored by the state government. According to Midiamax, access to its site is blocked on public computers connected to the system of the Superintendency of Information Management.
Journalists and media outlets in the western Peruvian city of Chimbote have joined to protest the president of the Ancash region, who they say is persecuting and harassing reporters who have criticized his government, CPN Radio reports.