The president of the Chilean journalists guild, Rodrigo Miranda, criticized the country's mainstream media for ignoring the hunger strike, that began July 12, by 32 indigenous Mapuches imprisoned in southern Chile, reported BBC Mundo.
One day after Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, announced legal proceedings against newspapers Clarín and La Nación for illegally appropriating newsprint company Papel Prensa during the military dictatorship (1976-1983), both newspapers and the government are locked in debate filled with contradicting claims about the purchase of the company back in 1976.
Ayres Britto, of Brazil's Federal Supreme Court, granted an injunction the evening of Thursday, Aug. 26, against enforcement of a law that censors humor during election campaigns in Brazil. Britto responded partially to a complaint of unconstitutionality, filed by the Brazilian Association of Radio and TV Stations (ABERT), questioning restrictions of the electoral code (Law 9.504/97).
Paraguayan journalist Rosendo Duarte, correspondent for the newspaper ABC in the city of Salto del Guairá, on the border with Brazil, was threatened during his radio program on Wednesday, Aug. 25, ABC reported.
A car bomb exploded in the early hours Friday, Aug, 27, at the doors of Mexican T.V. network Televisa in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, reported CNN, El Universal and Milenio. The explosion caused damages to the building, taking the channel off the air, but hurting no one. Another bomb went off at the local transit authority, added the new agency EFE.
A journalist sentenced to prison, accused of slanderous propaganda and offending the honor of Osmar Calenge, a 2004 candidate for the City Council of Lagoa Santa, in Minas Gerais, entered a request for habeas corpus before the Federal Supreme Court, asking for the sentence to be dismissed, according to the court.
The Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Stations (ABERT), has decided to go to the Federal Supreme Court over two sections of the Election Law: paragraphs forbidding jokes about politicians and the prevention of broadcasters from disseminating opinions about party candidates during campaigns.
Police found 27 bullet casings outside the home of Edín Maas Bol, whose family of reporters in the central Guatemalan city of Cobán, Alta Verapaz, have suffered three previous attacks, including the killing of his brother, reported Prensa Libre and Cobán Noticioso.
Radio station FM Cerrillos, out of San José de Cerrillos in the province of Salta in Argentina, is off the air after its transmission equipment was stolen, and a fire was started that left one person injured, reported La Hora de Jujuy and Noticias Iruya.
The vice president of Guatemala, Rafael Espada, tried to sue Marta Yolanda Díaz-Durán for libel, insult and defamation after she wrote a column published a year ago in the newspaper Siglo Veintiuno, but the Constitutional Court this week dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the journalist only expressed her opinion in the media, reported Cerigua.
In June, the U.S. embassy in Bogota denied renowned television journalist Hollman Morris a visa to come to the United States as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, permanently banning him from entry on the basis that the Patriot Act blocked him because of "terrorist ties.". After public outcry, however, the U.S. State Department in July reversed its decision.
Giant U.S. communications company Time Warner reached an agreement to purchase Chilevisión, the network of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, for $140 million, reported La Tercera.