Journalists in Campina Grande, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba, marched May 17 against the local government for data restrictions adopted by the police and the Institute of Forensic Medicine, PB Agora reports.
After a workshop on teaching border reporting held April 29-May 1 at the University of Arizona, journalism educators from nine U.S. colleges have joined forces to establish the Border Journalism Network/La Red de Periodismo de la Frontera, according to a University of Arizona statement.
With the Committee to Protect Journalists reporting 861 journalists killed in the line of duty since 1992, and another 145 in prison currently, YouTube has launched a journalist memorial video channel, according to ReadWriteWeb.
Journalists and citizens from throughout Central America are coming together to discuss the "urgent" issues facing the region as part of the 2011 Central American Forum on Journalism, organized by the Salvadoran digital newspaper El Faro, or The Lighthouse. The forum got underway Monday, May 16, and will continue through Saturday, May 21, in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Reporting on the illegal narcotics industry and organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean is much more difficult, complex and dangerous than it looks like, according to a new digital book in English and Spanish released by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, in conjunction with the Open Society Foundations.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was just elected to a third term, has received, for the second year in a row, an "F-" in access to information, according to the National Post.
In a talk to commemorate World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Brazil’s UNESCO representative, Vincent Defourny, called for the passage of a stalled public information access law, G1 reports.
Against the expectations of Brazil's President Dilma Roussef, the proposed information access law will not be approved Tuesday, May 3, World Press Freedom Day, as originally anticipated. Former president Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached in 1992 and is a current senator for the center-right Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), halted the information access bill, reported Folha de S. Paulo.
Ecuador’s government backtracked on its decision to not renew El Universo newspaper’s presidential press credentials, El Comercio reports. This is in spite of an ongoing conflict between the daily and President Rafael Correa, who initiated an $80 million defamation suit against it in March.
In a joint session on April 19, the Human Rights and Science and Technology committees passed an information access bill, which ends the state of indefinite secrecy for public records, the Agência Senado reports.
The commentary Kowanin Silva, of the newspaper Vanguardia de Saltillo, wrote here last week [April 18] about the use of social networks to break the information blockade, was very correct, as publishing on Facebook or Twitter helps a newspaper to get information out immediately.
Renowned Brazilian journalist Fernando Rodrigues, who has worked as a reporter, editor, foreign correspondent, and columnist and was a Nieman Fellow in 2007, has been instrumental in the push for Brazil to finally adopt a freedom of information law. The president of the Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (Abraji), which is one of the world's top investigative groups, Rodrigues also played a key role in the 2004 launch of the Forum for the Right to Access Public Information. Due in part to years of Rodrigues' tireless efforts campaigning for freedom of information, Brazil finally is poised to enact a p