The Ecuadorian government has asked cartoonist Xavier Bonilla, known as Bonil, to appear before the Superintendent of Information and Communication and explain the contents of an editorial cartoon published in newspaper El Universo that officials are calling defamatory. Seven months after Ecuador’s new Communications Law came into effect and created the office of the Superintendent, Bonil is the first media worker to be summoned by the new agency.
Trinidad and Tobago’s House of Representatives passed on Jan. 24 a bill that partially decriminalizes defamation. The bill will now proceed to the Senate for consideration.
The Ecuadorian government has asked cartoonist Xavier Bonilla, known as Bonil, to appear before the Superintendent of Information and Communication and explain the contents of an editorial cartoon published in newspaper El Universo that officials are calling defamatory.
Eight reporters were arrested on Monday Jan. 27 during a protest against the sale of the Chilean newspaper La Nación. The protest took place during the meeting of shareholders where the sale of the 97-year-old newspaper was finalized.
Costa Rican newspaper Diario Extra has accused the country’s judicial authorities of spying on one of its reporters. Freedom of expression organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) described the case as similar to Associated Press’ experience last year with the United States government.
Guatemala's central taxation agency will begin next week an audit on newspaper elPeriódico, the daily reported on Wednesday. ElPeriódico called it "fiscal persecution" and the most recent government aggression against it.
This past weekend, Guatemala’s highest elected officials, President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti withdrew two criminal complaints they filed in December – one for blackmail and contempt, the other for violence against women – against José Rubén Zamora, editor of the newspaper elPeriódico.
A group of journalists covering the expansion of vigilante groups in the Mexican state of Michoacán became stranded in a local town after being caught in crossfire this weekend, reported freedom of expression organization Article 19.
A court ordered Guatemalan journalist and director of newspaper elPeriódico José Rubén Zamora Marroquín not to leave the country. His bank accounts were also frozen.
The director of Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora, wrote in a recent opinion article that he will not pay a fine of 500 quetzales (about $63) – under the penalty of going to prison for disobedience – after defying a recent judicial order that bars him from "disturbing or intimidating" the country's vice president, Ingrid Roxanna Baldetti.
Mike O’Connor, a veteran war correspondent who spent the last five years advocating for journalists’ safety in Mexico for the Committee to Protect Journalists, died of a heart attack on Dec. 29. He was 67.
Juan Pablo Suárez, editor of the Argentine digital newspaper Última Hora, faces sedition charges after being accused of helping instigate the police strikes and widespread looting that swept the country last week, newspaper Clarín reported.