São Paulo police recaptured Wilson de Moraes da Silva, who was convicted for the death of journalist Ivandel Godinho Júnior, Globo Notícias reports. The journalist was kidnapped in 2003 and his body was found and identified by a DNA test in 2006. The police found the fugitive after an anonymous tip claimed that Silva was selling drugs in a house in São Paulo.
In recognition of International Women's Day on Tuesday, Reporters Without Borders released a report on the problems women journalists face in their work, according to QMI Agency. The report, "News Media: A Men’s Preserve that is Dangerous for Women," highlights problems such as segregation, violence, and inequality in the newsroom.
A top official in the Social Defense Secretariat in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, Colonel Elías Augusto Siqueira de Souza, was fired last week after pressuring a local journalist to reveal his sources, Folha de Pernambuco reports.
The Brazilian Senate is considering a proposed Constitutional amendment that would make Internet access a right for all citizens, according to El Nuevo Herald. Sen. Rodrigo Rollemberg, author of the proposal, wants to make the government responsible for providing Internet access to everyone.
Journalists working for big media companies and their independent blogger colleagues are facing the same problem: the risk of lawsuits for their work.
Just two days after the release of a report on the state of press freedom in Mexico that denounced increasing police and military aggression against reporters, a photographer for the Televisa station was arrested and beaten by security agents in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila on Friday, March 4, reported local press.
The Salvadoran Congress ratified the Public Information Access Law on Thursday, March 3, after accepting some of the changes proposed by President Mauricio Funes, reported news agency EFE.
The Peruvian newspaper Voces was hit with three homemade explosives in the city of Tarapoto, Panamericana Televisión reports.
The documentary “Presumed Guilty,” about judicial mistakes and corruption in Mexico, may become a victim of the system it criticizes, La Crónica de Hoy reports. Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction after a witness in a trial, which led to the ultimately overturned conviction of Antonio Zuniga for murder, said he never gave permission to be filmed, the Los Angeles Times explains.
Despite strong results reported by media companies like Estado and Editora Abril, the layoffs of journalists in São Paulo already total 207 this year.
La Prensa, Honduras’ most circulated newspaper, reports that it will no longer publish photos of “cadavers” or images of body bags as part of its new editorial policy on covering the increase in violence in the country.
At least 139 journalists and 21 media outlets in Mexico suffered violence related to their work in 2010, a year in which violence against them media grew and drug traffickers were not the only perpetrators, says the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) in its annual report.