Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced last week the creation of ‘El Noticiero de la Verdad’ ("The Truth Newscast"), news agency EFE reported. Private and state media outlets will be required to run the new government radio and TV broadcast twice a day.
After Venezuela's withdrawal from the American Convention on Human Rights on Sep. 10, Venezuelans are now unable to take cases pertaining to freedom of expression violations, among others, to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, said Ariel E. Dulitzky, former assistant executive secretary at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and a leading expert in the inter-American human rights system, in a recent interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
The Ecuadorian government has proposed penalizing individuals who express opinions that could be considered defamatory on social media, freedom of expression non-profit Fundamedios reported.
Journalist Antônio Fabiano Portilho Coene, the owner of news Portal i9 was kidnapped on Monday Sept. 9 by armed men in the city of Campo Grande in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, website Diario do Estado informed.
A Brazilian court has prohibited Diario de Pernambuco and Jornal do Commercio, two of the largest newspapers in the state of Pernambuco, from mentioning the name or show pictures of the president of the state’s Legislative Assembly, Guilherme Uchoa, news portal Terra reported. The decision also applies to Brazilian station TV Clube.
A group of 60 persons -- among them journalists, politicians, writers and former Ecuadorian legislators -- have filed a new lawsuit before the Constitutional Court with the goal of revoking the country's controversial communications law, representing the second attempt to strike down the law through the courts.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the arrest of four independent journalists in Mexico City on Sunday Sept. 1 while they covered a protest against the education reform proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
The recent surge of legal actions against private media outlets in Venezuela has caught the attention of several journalism organizations, who have described them as attacks on freedom of expression.
The director of the Brasilia bureau for the Brazilian magazine Época, Diego Escosteguy, announced that he received insult-filled and threatening messages through Facebook from an anonymous user on Saturday, Aug. 10.
The Bartolomé Carrasco Briseño Regional Center for Human Rights, located in Mexico, denounced new threats against journalist Pedro Matías Arrazola, correspondent for Proceso magazine in the state of Oaxaca and anchor of an online news show.
In an article posted on July 30, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) stated its "concern" over the "abrupt economic measures against the country's journalists and news-media companies" implemented by the Venezuelan government.
Venezuela's attorney general is seeking to freeze the assets of the daily El Nacional's executive editor.