Four journalism organizations are oppenly opposing a new electoral law, enacted three weeks ago, which they say violates free expression. (Read the full text PDF of the law in Spanish here.)
Renowned journalist Hollman Morris can now travel to the United States and attend Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow, after the Department of State decided to grant Morris the student visa that it had originally denied him, the Nieman Foundation reports.
President Hugo Chavez announced that his government effectively owns more than a 45 percent stake in Globovisión, a station highly critical of his administration, and that in the next several days he would appoint a member to the channel’s board, Reuters and El Universal report.
Cuban authorities have blocked Yoani Sanchez, author of Generation Y, from traveling to Brazil to see a documentary on censorship in Cuba and Honduras, EFE reports.
The newspaper La Nación and the oil company YPF are engaged in a public fight over the company's advertising policy and the newspaper's editorial agenda, according to the newspaper Los Andes.
Alejandro Aguirre, president of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) said that in Latin America, democratically elected governments are falling to authoritarianism and increasingly restricting press freedom, reported Voice of America.
After two days in jail in Venezuela, two Colombian journalists from the television station RCN and two more from a regional station were deported, accused of illegally entering Venezuela, reported the Latin American Herald Tribune and El Tiempo.
A proposed law that will be debated in Paraguay's House of Representatives would establish community radio stations as those with signal strength between 50 and 300 watts, and would prohibit them from receiving funding from state or private advertising. The Paraguayan Journalists Union rejected the measure, calling the restrictions arbitrary.
Omar Rodríguez Saludes, Normando Hernández González and Mijail Bárzaga, who had been arrested in a crackdown on dissidents in March 2003, bring to nine the number of imprisoned journalists released by the Cuban government, reported the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
After spending 19 days behind bars for defamation charges stemming from an article he wrote more than a decade ago, 71-year-old Panamanian journalist Carlos Nuñez was freed from jail Wednesday, July 14, reported EFE and La Estrella.
Representatives from Brazil's media outlets sent a document to Minister Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes, the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs, arguing that "freedom to think and express opinions and information, without control by whomever, is the very essence of democracy," according to Folha de S. Paulo (link for subscribers) and O Globo.
In a show of international solidarity, journalism and human rights organizations from throughout the hemisphere are calling on the U.S. government to reverse its ban prohibiting renowned Colombian journalist Hollman Morris from entering the United States to take his place as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.