Bolivian journalist Raúl Peñaranda had to quit his newspaper to save it.
The last six months represented the worst semester for journalists in the Americas in the last five years, according to the Inter American Press Association, news agency EFE reported. The killing of journalists and the various government measures that restrict access to information were some of the reasons that IAPA cited during its General Assembly, which took place in Denver last weekend.
The concentration of the media by “autocratic” governments is one of the “the greatest obstacles for the freedom of the press in the western hemisphere during the last six months of the year” and the killing of 14 journalists represents one of the highest numbers in the last 20 years, the Inter American Press Association noted during the conclusion of its 69th General Assembly in Denver last weekend.
Viltor García, a bodyguard for cable channel director Karen Rottman, had just finished his shift on Oct. 19 when he was shot and killed by attackers in a vehicle with tinted glass windows in Guatemala City, informed Reporters without Borders (RSF). Rottman is the director of Vea Canal, an independent cable channel critical of the nation's administration.
The Cuban government appointed new editors for its two main newspapers, Granma and Juventud Rebelde, describing the move as part of a “renewal” process to improve the country’s official press, BBC News reported.
By Alsha Khan In the last twelve months in Venezuela, there has been a decline of Internet freedom, showing a substantial increase in the censorship of opinions about political events, like the death of Hugo Chávez and the presidential elections in April, according to the report Freedom on the Net published by Freedom House in […]
Update 10/18/2013: According to Reporters without Borders, all three journalists, along with Denis Noa Martinez and Pablo Morales Marchán (correspondents for Hablemos Press) who had been arrested Sunday, were released on Oct. 14.
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has published a new bilingual book compiling several reports from independent Cuban journalists on different social aspects of life in the island. "With Open Voices" gathers articles in Spanish and English on Cuba's isolated society, which continues to suffer from constant attacks against human rights.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called on the country's courts and authorities to consider “special measures” that would grant him the ability to sanction print, television and radio news media after accusing them of waging "a psychological war” over Venezuela's current food shortage.
The Washington correspondent of Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, Cláudia Trevisan, was arrested on Thursday, Sep. 26 after trying to interview the president of Brazil's Federal Supreme Tribunal (STF) Joaquim Barbosa, who was attending a conference at Yale University.
As part of its campaign Impunity Kills, the Mexico chapter of press freedom organization Article 19 started a launch campaign for both a new documentary and a petition gathering signatures to ask the nation's authorities to fulfill their duties to protect journalists and investigate crimes against them.
The Cuban government rejected "guaranteeing freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, as well as the free activity of human rights defenders, independent journalists and those in opposition to the government," from among 292 formulated recommendations by the UN Human Rights Council, according to a Notimex report published in the Diario of Cuba.