These days, headlines around the world often seem absurd, and Latin American writers have capitalized on the outlandish nature of their countries’ political and economic situations to create content for the region’s growing list of satirical publications.
In an editorial published on Jan. 21, the newspaper El Colombiano, one of the most important and traditional publications in the country, acknowledged a case of plagiarism by the international editor, Diana Carolina Jiménez, and said that after reviewing the case, the journalist is not longer part of the team.
Mainstream media coverage of Brazilian protests in June, 2013, both on websites and Twitter, highlighted riots and acts of vandalism, rather than demands made by protestors, according to a University of Texas researcher. The findings, which shed light on the role of media in the portrayal of protests, were presented at the 2014 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Montreal, Canada.
The director of the Caracas newspaper, Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, asked the Attorney General’s office last week to open an investigation against Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, his attorney Ytala Hernández Torres and Yurbis Sayago Ramos, notary third of Chacao, for allegedly forging public documents, embezzlement and favoring public officers.
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) received the headlines and contents of the country's infamous tabloid newspapers known as "prensa chicha" before they were published, according to recent testimony heard at Fujimori's most recent trial over accusations that his government financed the newspapers in hope of boosting his 2000 election campaign.
A court in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais has ordered the preventive detention of journalist Marco Aurelio Flores Carone at the request of the state’s district attorney. The editor of website Novojornal was jailed after he was accused of attacking several witnesses in criminal trials in which he is a defendant, newspaper Estado de Minas reported.
The Grenada Parliament has passed a law to sanction offensive online content, which could punish defamation through the Internet with up to one year in prison, the International Press Institute (IPI) informed.
Not all media outlets were accomplices to the disinformation campaign that prevailed in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, said Marcelo Castillo, president of the Journalists’ Association in Chile, in response to declarations made by President Sebastián Piñera to the foreign press, and previously, to Chilean newspaper La Tecera.
Eduardo Ponte, El Nacional's interactive content and social media manager, said his tech support and programming team were unable to detect any intrusion to their servers or interruption to the site's service.
The presidents of three newspapers in the Dominican Republic have asked for the decriminalization of defamation, in the Law on Expression and Diffusion of Thought and in the Penal Code, on the grounds on unconstitutionality, reported the newspaper El Día.
In what has become a historic decision, the Council of State of Colombia ordered the National Police to correct a statement given in 1996 that affected two businessmen, said the newspaper El Tiempo. The Director of the Police will have to give a press conference and correct the information given to a television news program as an “exclusive” that linked two businessmen with a drug cartel, said the paper.
The only newspaper in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, the Penguin News, published a fake interview with Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman after the official refused to speak with the media, reported the newspaper La Nación.