Transparency and public information access advocates accused the Supreme Federal Court (STF) of censoring information about investigations against politicians and public officials, O Globo reports.
The National Telecommunications Council (Conatel) of Ecuador ordered the closure of radio broadcaster La Voz de la Esmeralda Oriental Canela and rejected an appeal by the owner, journalist Wilson Cabrera, who is fighting the non-renewal of the radio's frequency, reported Fundamedios/IFEX.
A Buenos Aires judge has ruled that demonstrators cannot block access to AGR, a printing company owned by the Clarín media group, and said the Security Ministry must take steps to guarantee the company’s ability to print, Clarín and La Nación newspapers report.
The Inter American Commission on Human Rights presented a complaint against Argentina before the Inter-American Court of the Organization of American States for violating the freedom of expression of two journalists who 15 years ago revealed that ex-President Carlos Menem had a child out of wedlock.
The Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color reports that two of its journalists were interrogated and had their documents photocopied by police in Tarija, the largest city in the Bolivian state of the same name that borders Paraguay and Argentina. The reporters were in Bolivia to investigate the case against the governor of Tarija, Mario Cossío, who fled to Paraguay after being removed from office on corruption charges, EFE explains.
Because of a Knight Center blog post titled “Brazilian court upholds censorship of title of parody newspaper site,” social media editor of Folha de S. Paulo, Marcos Strecker, sent the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas a note denying that the newspaper had censored any blog.
Editors of Ecuador’s Vanguardia magazine have petitioned a court to order the return of 40 computers confiscated during a police raid on the magazine’s Quito headquarters. See reports in English by the Inter American Press Association and the local NGO Fundamedios.
The National Assembly has expanded the powers of the Venezuelan Executive by granting the president decree powers and the authority to further regulate telecommunications, The Associated Press and Reuters report.
The Cuban authorities refused to allow Guillermo Fariñas to travel to France, where he received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in absentia, BBC reports.
A panel of experts charged with developing a new broadcast law in Uruguay has submitted its final report to the industry minister and will be presented to President José Mujica in the second half of 2011, El País newspaper and the Prensa Latina news agency report.
In recent days Brazil has seen various demonstrations in support of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (ABRAJI) issued a statement supporting the publication of documents from a cache of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, arguing that the information is in the public's interest.
President-elect Dilma Rousseff said the only control on the media should be a TV's “remote control,” O Estado de S. Paulo reports. The remarks were seen as a signal that Rousseff would not send a media bill to congress with provisions that regulate radio and TV content.