Campaign trail coverage of the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday, Jan. 3, is in full swing. By the end of December, the campaign was the most-covered story in U.S. media for the fifth time in seven weeks, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
At the start of 2012, media organizations and news sites are looking back at the top stories of 2011 (see this CNN list for a good run-down), suggesting new year's resolutions for newsrooms, and even offering a few trends that will "reshape digital news in 2012," as Poynter did.
Journalists have joined the growing list of groups opposed to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) under consideration by the U.S. congress, according to the Washington Post.
On Nov. 28, federal officials kept a reporting team from the Venezuelan television network Globovisión from covering a meeting between President Hugo Chávez and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in the capital Caracas, reported the Press and Society Institute (IPYS in Spanish).
On Thursday, Dec. 1, WikiLeaks published its latest document trove: more than 287 files related to 160 intelligence contracting companies in 25 countries that "develop technologies to allow the tracking and monitoring of individuals by their mobile phones, email accounts and Internet browsing histories," reported AFP.
A Nov. 25 cyber attack forced the weekly Mexican news site Ríodoce offline, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Ríodoce is one of the few publications that covers drug trafficking and organized crime in the northwestern city of Culiacán.
Bolivian President Evo Morales proposed regulating the media and modifying the Press Law leading up to the Plurinational Summit, which will take place in December in the city of Cochabamba, reported the radio station FM Bolivia.
Brazil recently passed its own sunshine law, codifying the right to make freedom of information requests from the government. While the legal battle over the law’s passage is over, many Brazilians are unsure about how to go about making freedom of information requests. The website Queremos Saber (“We Want to Know”) is trying to change that. This pioneering project seeks to facilitate information requests in Brazil and make communication between citizens and public servants more transparent.
With President Dilma Rousseff's signature on Friday, Nov. 18, Brazil became the 89th country in the world to approve a freedom of information law, reported the Forum of Public Information Access. The law, which guarantees public access to government data and documents as well as private entities that receive public funding, will take effect in six months.
Human Rights Watch asked the Ecuadorian government to repeal all insult and defamation laws against public officials, the New York-based human rights organization announced.
Faring about on par with Asia, better than Africa but worse than Europe, only about 38 percent of countries in Latin America were fully responsive to freedom of information requests filed by the Associated Press (AP) as part of a 105-country-wide project, the AP told the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. In general, more than half of countries don't abide by their freedom of information laws, MediaBistro noted.
Following accusations of corruption involving Carlos Lupi, Brazilian minister of Labor and Employment, Lupi ordered the stories being investigated by the media to be leaked on one of the ministry's blogs, reported Terra.