The organization Freedom House released its 2014 report on freedom of the press around the world, noting that in 2013 global press freedom was at its lowest level in more than a decade and the lowest in five years for the Americas.
On Saturday April 26, around 7,000 people formed a human chain in front of Mexico’s Senate in protest of a new proposed communications bill that President Enrique Peña Nieto presented last Monday.
Press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned last week that a recent statement by Haiti’s National Council of Telecommunications (CONATEL) could lead to self-censorship in the country.
More than half of journalists in Bolivia said they have suffered censorship and/or self-censorship during their professional lives, according to a presentation by researcher Virginie Poyetton on April 16 on her new book “Journalistic censorship and self-censorship in Bolivia. A perspective from within the profession itself,” reported newspaper Opinión.
In the last several years the administration of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has created a media network that is privately owned but is indirectly controlled by the government in an effort to have direct influence over public opinion, according to a new book about the Bolivian government’s relationship with the media.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calledCuban authorities to release independent journalist Juliet Michelena Diaz, who was arrested on April 7. Diaz was arrested three days before an article she wrote on an episode of police violence she witnessed in La Habana was set to run in Cubanet, a news site based in Miami. The article detailed the use of police dogs in the streets and the arrest and excessive use of force against citizens.
Honduran journalist Julio Ernesto Alvarado, from television channel Globo TV, was sentenced to 16 months of prison for defaming Belinda Flores Mendoza, dean of the School of Economic Sciences at the Autonomous University of Honduras.
The Colombian newspaper association Andiarios on April 1 sent 52 tons of newsprint paper from Cartagena to Venezuelan newspapers affected by the lack of printing paper in the country.
Three reporters resigned from Venezuelan TV station Globovisión on Mar. 28 in protest against the channel’s alleged censorship practices and the dismissal of their team of cameramen and technicians.
The Information and Communication Superintendence, the government department responsible for regulation the media in Ecuador, decided on Tuesday March 25 to fine Diario Extra 10 percent of its average income for the past three months for failing to rectify headlines in two cases.
Ecuadorian authorities issued last week an order to detain journalist and activist Fernando Villavicencio after he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Villavicencio was found guilty of defaming President Rafael Correa, press freedom organization Fundamedios reported.
Costa Rica’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court has ruled that intelligence officials broke the law when they tapped into a journalist’s telephone line, the Tico Times reported.