Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) executive director Joel Simon testified at a briefing on press freedom in Latin America that violence and legal harassment are the biggest obstacles journalists face in the region, according to CPJ’s website.
After a series of increasingly aggressive threats from an ex-commander of the Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar (ROTA in Portuguese), an arm of the São Paulo Military Police, the newspaper Folha de São Paulo moved its reporter André Caramante to an undisclosed location for his security, reported the newspaper Brasil de Fato.
Venezuela's presidential election will take place next Sunday, Oct. 7. In this period of the campaign, the media landscape in the country is polarized between supporters of President Hugo Chávez and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. An analysis from BBC revealed that while the Venezuelan government has built a media empire of five public broadcasters, the state-run channels have only a slim 5.4 percent of the audience share, according to an investigation by AGB Panamericana.
The Information Safety bill that is currently being considered by Panama’s National Assembly could represent a threat to freedom of expression in that country, according to several journalists’ unions and associations, the newspaper La Estrella reported.
Ecuador's Electoral Court (TCE in Spanish) sentenced a magazine to pay $80,000 for publishing an editorial on Sept. 26, reported the newspaper El Universo.
An Ecuadorian journalist was denied entrance into a press meeting with the country's President, Rafael Correa, at the Teleradio Noticias station after the Secretary of Communication complained that his questions could make some officials uncomfortable, reported Fundamedios.
As Televisa continues to deny any connection between the television broadcaster and a money laundering ring in Nicaragua, a prosecutor in the Central American country said that some of the suspects, arrested while impersonating reporters, supposedly called the broadcaster shortly before they were apprehended.
The judge that ordered the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo to remove a blog post about a mayoral candidate in the Brazilian city Macapá, Amapá rescinded the decision to censor the post on Wednesday evening, Sept. 25.
An independent journalist in Cuba could face three years in prison for insulting the island's leader, President Raúl Castro, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Argentina’s government said it would strip most of Grupo Clarín’s television licenses, a fact that citizens discovered through advertisements broadcasted during soccer games on Sept. 22, Bloomberg reported.
An Electoral Court in the Brazilian state of Macapá ordered the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo to remove a blog post by journalist João Bosco Rabello on Wednesday, Sept. 19, reported the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism.
Several press freedom groups expressed their concern over the perceived politicization of the Guyanese National Broadcasting Authority (NBA) on Wednesday, Sept. 19, only a month after the authority’s mandate took effect.