The trend of newspapers implementing paywalls is emerging in Brazil. Starting on Thursday, June 21, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo will start charging a fee to access the content on its website, which will have the entire printed edition available, reported the same newspaper.
In its biannual Global Transparency Report, Google reported that in the past six months, the Internet giant has received more than 1,000 requests from governments around the world to take down information, whether YouTube videos or search listings, according to CNET. This "alarming" level of steadily increasing government censorship included 187 requests from the U.S. government to remove 6,192 pieces of content, 42 percent of which Google complied with, Google said. That's a 103 percent increase over the previous six-month period, reported Politico.
On Tuesday, June 12, the Argentine Journalism Forum applauded the new public information access in the Misiones Province of Argentina, which was approved on June 7 by the provincial congress, and said that this "means a significant step forward for freedom of expression, state transparency, and citizens' rights in democracy."
In only 15 days, four radio broadcasters and two TV channels were closed in Ecuador, reported the news agency EFE. The Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios reported that the closed news media outlets are the TV channels Telesangay (of the province of Morona Santiago), Lidervisión (from Napo), and the radios stations El Dorado (from Sucumbíos), Líder (from Napo), Pantera (from Pichincha), and Net (from Tungurahua), reported the news paper El Comercio.
On Saturday, June 9, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that he is considering preventing public officials from granting interviews to for-profit, private news media, in an attempt to financing those families that own these news media outlets, reported the news agency EFE.
The British newspaper The Guardian said it had documents that proved that a Mexican presidential candidate bought favorable coverage on the most important TV station in the country, Televisa.
Cuban authorities have given independent journalist Alexis Ferrer 72 hours to leave the island, reported the site Cuba Encuentro.
On Thursday, May 31, the first Braille newspaper in Central American was published in Guatemala, reported the news site CNN México. The monthly publication Publinews Braille will be available at no cost in the offices of the Committee for the Blind and Deaf of Guatemala and will be available for 110,000 blind people, according to the radio station Emisoras Unidas.
Succumbing to pressure from the Mexican student movement “Yo Soy 132,”, or "I am 132," the president of the TV station Televisa, Emilio Azcárraga, agreed to nationally broadcast the next presidential debate, reported Noticias MVS. Then, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, president of the second largest TV station, TV Azteca, announced that it, too, would nationally televise the debate, according to El Informador.
Heading towards the Mexican presidential elections on July 1, voting surveys are done on Facebook; candidates have cell phone 'apps' and YouTube channels, and citizen journalists are the protagonists of new digital media that have refreshed electoral coverage to meet the demands of a younger and more informed public. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas interviewed the directors of Mexican digital and independent media about this tendency.
Columbia University in the United States and the School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM in Portuguese) in Brazil worked in collaboration to launch the Journalism Magazine of the ESPM, the Brazilian version of the influential Columbia Journalism Review, reported the portal Meio e Mensagem. The magazine, to be published every trimester, started circulating at the beginning of May.
Journalist organizations condemned a court order that forces a Puerto Rican journalist to reveal the identity of a confidential source, reported the newspaper El Nuevo Día.