Press, legal, and human rights groups are united in their opposition to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s decision to allow permanent secrecy for official documents as part of a pending information access law.
Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (IFE in Spanish) is considering a bill that would regulate the right of reply during the election campaign period that would effectively require the media to publish for free all of the responses of political parties and candidates who feel aggrieved by a news article, according to El Universal.
On June 14, when Ernesto Che Guevara would have turned 83, his widow, Aleida March, decided to release the previously unpublished journals the Argentine revolutionary wrote about the Cuban revolution, reported UPI. The journals are part of a series of tributes to his journalistic work, in particular his work for the magazine Olive Green, which he founded, according to Prensa Libre.
The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji in Portuguese) laments the government's change of heart toward a proposed information access law.
After backlash from some government officials, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff has changed her mind about a proposed information access law, and now supports the ability to keep official documents secret forever, reported Terra.
U.S. newspapers should do a much better job covering drug trafficking in their own cities, charged a Mexican editor who argues the drug cartels love nothing better than to limit coverage of their deadly activities.
Several Latin American countries have recently adopted information access laws in order to promote government transparency and facilitate the public’s right to know. While the passage of such laws is certainly an important step, a new report notes that legal recognition does not mark the end to the fight for greater transparency, Sociedad Uruguaya reports.
In the midst of a tense relationship between President Cristina Fernández and the country’s media, the concept of “militant journalism” is a constant theme of debate in Argentina. El Diario 24 columnist Adrián Carlos Corbella wonders whether there is journalism that escapes this label and questions the demonization of “militant” – i.e. openly ideological – journalists by those who self-identify as “independent.”
The meeting began with a moment of silence for slain television journalist Yensi Roberto Ordoñez Galdamez. Nearly 80 journalists bowed their heads as they gathered for the “3rd International Meeting of Journalists from the Departments and the Capital of Guatemala.” Their mission: to bring journalists together for training and dialogue in hopes of improving coverage of the upcoming elections.
Knight Fellows at Stanford University recently discussed digital initiatives in the Americas, including a plan to improve communication among Cuban bloggers, a proposed web portal to help Latino teens become better informed, and an online "toolkit" to help journalists cover Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Coinciding with a call by international organizations for increased freedom of expression on the Internet, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report urges governments to support internet use as a human right, GigaOm reports.
Representatives from the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights signed the "Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and the Internet", a document that urges governments not to limit freedom of expression online, reported EFE.