Prosecutors have charged two people in the kidnapping of Luis Gerardo Núñez, a reporter for the Globovisión TV network who was rescued in Caracas Friday night by police after a ransom was paid, Globovisión and El Carabobeño report. He was abducted for at least 48 hours.
The Inter American Press Association has invited readers of almost 400 papers throughout the Americas to sign a letter to President Porfirio Lobo Sosa asking him to take actions to confront and stop violence against Honduran journalists. Six journalists and one broadcaster have been killed in the country since March 1.
Secretary of Security Óscar Álvarez said authorities were close to solving two of the seven killings of media workers in less than two months (six journalists and one broadcaster), including last week’s shooting of TV journalist Jorge “Georgino” Orellana, La Prensa reports.
President Porfirio Lobo is arranging for Spain and Colombia to help solve the crimes committed in the last two months against six journalists and one radio announcer in Honduras, El Heraldo reports.
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA) has published on its website an interactive map that counts 147 cases of aggression against journalists and threats to freedom of expression in the country in 2009.
The Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (Abraji) invites journalists and students to participate in the 5th International Congress on Investigative Journalism, from July 29-31, 2010, in São Paulo.
The “Newsroom Council” (Consejo de Redacción—CDR) will hold its 3rd annual Investigative Journalism Meeting from April 30–May 1, 2010, in Bogotá.
Amid growing conflicts with the media, President Fernando Lugo said he is arranging for the UN's special rapporteur and a delegation from the Inter American Press Association to evaluate in an "impartial and disinterested manner" the country's state of press freedom, La Nación reports.
Jorge Orellana, known as Georgino, died Tuesday night, April 21, after being shot by a gunman seconds after he walked outside the offices of Canal de Televisión Honduras, where he produced the TV program "En Vivo con Georgino" (Live with Georgino) in San Pedro Sul, El Tiempo reports.
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an association of women whose children disappeared during the dictatorship (1976-1983), have organized a demonstration April 29 to give an "ethical and political judgement of those journalists complicit" with the military regime.
Arsenio Zambrano Ocampo, a well-known independent photographer, died last week after he was stabbed in his home in Ibagué, in Tolima department, the Colombian Federation of Journalists (Fecolper) reports. Citizens and colleagues were shocked by the news, El Tiempo says.
Spanish journalist Judith Torrea has spent 12 years working as an independent journalist. Last year she created the blog “Ciudad Juárez, en la sombra del narcotráfico” (Ciudad Juárez, in the shadow of narcotrafficking), where she reports on the crimes of drug mafias, stories that traditional media aren't always able to report. For this work, she has won the Ortega y Gasset Prize for Digital Journalism, El País reports. See this recent interview with Torrea in English by Salon.com.