As if the dangers of covering crime in one of the riskiest regions of the world for journalists weren’t enough, reporters in Northern Mexico now face new obstacles allegedly created by the authorities who were supposed to protect them.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called on the Inter American Court of Human Rights to sentence the Venezuelan government for having unlawfully shut down TV network RCTV in 2007.
To create more awareness and knowledge in Brazil about the country's young Public Information Law -- which was approved two years ago on May 16, 2012 -- the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association (Abraji) published this week on its site the guide in Portuguese “Public Information Law -- What you need to know,” with the financial support of UNESCO's International Program for the Development of Communication.
Forty-six percent of Guatemala's government institutions bound under the country's Access to Public Information Law (LAIP in Spanish) did not present their annual reports on how they responded to public information requests received during 2013, news website Plaza Pública reported.
Award-winning Colombian journalist María Teresa Ronderos will be the new director of Open Society Foundations' Program on Independent Journalism. Each year, the program channels millions of dollars to support independent journalism projects around the world.
Award-winning blogger and activist Yoani Sánchez has announced the name and launch date for the new digital publication that she announced earlier this year.
After his rupture with the Guatemalan university that has housed for three years the innovative digital publication Plaza Pública, its founder, journalist Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, is getting ready to launch a new site this summer.
On World Press Freedom Day, celebrated last May 3, Ecuadorian media outlets abstained from republishing an illustration created by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) that criticizes President Rafael Correa for his government's pressures against the press.
Ecuadorian press freedom NGO Fundamedios sent a letter to Twitter criticizing the company for having complied to remove content depicting or referring to President Rafael Correa that the organization described as public information. Twitter removed the content from its service after receiving several complaints in the last few months from Spanish company Ares Rights, which the Ecuadorian government is currently employing to track alleged copyright infringements online.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) featured 14 journalists from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and Peru in a list of 100 Information Heroes that the organization put together to highlight the work of journalists facing adverse circumstances around the globe and celebrate World Press Freedom Day, which takes place each year on May 3.
After almost three years of discussions and negotiations, a bill proposing a legal framework for internet operations in Brazil was approved by the two chambers of Congress and signed into law by President Dilma Rousseff on April 23 in São Paulo, during the opening of the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance - NET Mundial, Agência Brasil informed.
For Marianela Balbi, executive director of the Institute of Press and Society (IPYS) in Venezuela, the government of President Nicolás Maduro is censoring critical media outlets -- with tactics like the blockage of live broadcasts of the protests -- in an effort to prevent more people from joining the manifestations.