Enrique Lazo Flores, editor of the newspaper La Región, in the southern city of Ilo, Moquegua, was accused of attacking the honor of a regional politician Renato Ascuña Chavera, the Crónica Viva site reports. The prison sentence was suspended, but organizations denounced it as a serious threat to freedom of expression.
Businessman Aldo Zuccolillo, editor of the newspaper ABC Color, was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine plus interest to indemnify a judge who the newspaper had criticized for acquitting former President Luis González Macchi of embezzlement, ABC Color reports.
A worsening dispute between the Gulf drug cartel and its former security force, the Zetas, has resulted in 200 deaths in two weeks in the northeastern states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León and unprecedented censorship along Mexico’s border with Texas. The news blackout is backed by threats, kidnapping, and attacks against journalists, The Dallas Morning News reports.
In response to the recent debate over TV content, several members of Parliament have proposed measures to censor and regulate media. The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has expressed concern about possible governmental interference in the media's editorial decisions.
El Nacional published a front-page image that shows a soldier holding the chain and hooks before a group of students who were protesting the closure of the RCTV cable station. The newspaper also reports that prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation against it over the image published Jan. 28.
A former member of the secret police during the dictatorship has brought charges against Luiz Claudio Cunha for "moral harm" after being mentioned in the journalist’s book Operation Condor: The kidnapping of the Uruguayans, EFE reports (Spanish).
Twitter users in Mexico City have angered authorities by tweeting the locations of roadside Breathalyzer checkpoints, and kidnappers and drug traffickers are using Facebook and MySpace to communicate. Federal lawmakers have responded by proposing a bill to restrict social networking sites and to create a police force to monitor them, GlobalPost reports.
Adding to a litany of recent attacks on press freedom, the Ministry of Communications and Information plans to ask prosecutors to punish Tal Cual for an editorial describing a Venezuela without President Hugo Chávez, ABC.es reports.
Members of the National Revolutionary Police arrested Juan Carlos Reyes Ocaña near his home in Holguín on charges of insult, disobedience, and illicit economic activity, EFE and Reporters without Borders (RSF) report. Reyes works for the Holguín Press news agency.
Judith Torrea, a Spanish-born reporter, has covered U.S.–Mexico border issues such as the drug trade, immigration, and border policy for nine years. She was attracted to Ciudad Juárez since her first visit 12 years ago, despite its naming by a Mexican watchdog group as the world’s most violent city.
Don’t expect relations between Hugo Chávez and the U.S. media to improve in 2010. Venezuela’s government long ago declared war on “media terrorism,” its term for news organizations that criticize Chávez from within and outside the country. Chávez recently slammed the U.S. magazine Newsweek for its predictions that in 2010 Chávez faces another coup and that his mentor Fidel Castro will die this year in Cuba.
Messages leaked by an anonymous group allegedly show that former Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela sustained an operation during his tenure to carry out online attacks on journalists.