The Venezuelan government is suppressing news about the economic crisis in the country through attacks on journalists and the media, according to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Ildefonso Chávez, owner of Mexican daily El Pueblo, went on an indefinite hunger strike on Dec. 2 in front of Chihuahua State's Government Palace to protest the cancellation of state advertising in October, shortly after the newspaper published a series of stories critical of Chihuahua's governor
Journalism organization Reporters Without Borders criticized Chilean President Sebastián Piñera's veto of the Chilean Digital Television Law considering it a "deviation from the idea of pluralism, [one that] favors the economic interests of a few at the cost of real pluralism," said the group's website.
Last week eight journalists sued media conglomerate Grupo El Comercio before the Constitutional Court in Lima, Perú for its recent purchase of 54 percent of the shares of editorial group Epensa.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the autonomous regional court under the Organization of American States, has decided for the first time that criminal defamation doesn’t affect freedom of expression in an unprecedented ruling that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called a major setback for the region.
The Jamaican Parliament passed a bill on Nov. 5 that fully abolishes criminal defamation within the nation. The move is unprecedented in the Caribbean, where international and local organizations have pressured the region's governments to draft similar legislation.
Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, the producers of the Mexican documentary “Presumed Guilty,” are facing three different civil lawsuits for over two billion dollars in the Superior Court of Justice in Mexico City (TSJDF).
The detention of three Venezuelan reporters on Nov. 2 by the Military Police, which lasted over seven hours, continues to generate outrage among the media community after it was discovered that the government had summoned the journalists to the conference where they were detained.
So far this year, there have been 71 cases of censorship of journalists and media in Venezuela, meaning 87 percent more cases than there were over the same period last year, according to Venezuelan organizations that defend freedom of expression and information access that spoke about the situation in their country on Oct. 31 before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) during its 149th session.
At least 15 articles of Ecuador's new Organic Penal Code, partially approved by the National Assembly, could limit freedom of expression and turn into a tool to persecute citizens critical of the government, according to a report published by NGO Fundamedios.
Ismael López, a Nicaraguan journalist with news site Confidencial and its sister TV show Esta Semana, has accused the Nicaraguan Army of spying on him, according to the independent English-language online newspaper The Nicaragua Dispatch.
The International Press Institute has urged the Caribbean countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Saint Martin to examine and change their criminal defamation laws.