On Saturday, July 28, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that official government advertising will be withheld from several private news media outlets that have accused his administration of damaging freedom of expression in Ecuador.
The owner of a Brazilian community radio station in the city of Ilha das Flores (in the state of Sergipe) was absolved by a regional court after being sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for operating the radio station without authorization.
The Mexican governor of Sinaloa asked the press to change the image of this western state when reporting about drug trafficking and organized crime, reported the radio station Radio Fórmula.
Between 1999, when Hugo Chávez first became President of Venezuela, and June 2012, the country's television and radio stations have been forced to broadcast 2,334 president speeches, amounting to a total of 97,561 minutes of broadcasting.
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez reported through her Twitter account that seven people, among them journalists and dissidents, were arrested during the funeral of activist Oswaldo Payá on Tuesday, July 24.
A Honduran candidate complained that a mayor that is running for reelection closed news media outlets to prevent opposing candidates from expressing themselves, according to the organization Committee for Freedom of Expression in Honduras (C-Libre).
The freedom of expression situation in Venezuela has deteriorated since 2008, due to President Hugo Chávez's abundant power abuses, according to a report by the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW).
On Thursday, July 19, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador suspended its session scheduled to analyze the legality of the controversial Democracy Code, a regulation pushed by President Rafael Correa that regulates press coverage during electoral campaigns.
On Wednesday, July 18, Prosecutors sought a 15-year jail sentence for Cuban journalist José Antonio Torres who wrote a scathing investigative piece critical of an aqueduct construction project in the city of Santiago, according to the Miami Herald.
The government of Ecuador has received various criticisms in the last few days due to what Reporters Without Borders has called an excess of presidential attacks on opposition journalists for closing several media outlets.
Three Panamanian television journalists were absolved of defamation charges stemming from the broadcast of a video showing a police officer being bribed, reported the newspaper La Estrella on Tuesday, July 17.
Ecuador is one of countries in Latin America with the worst problems in practicing freedom of expression due to President Rafael Correa's repeated attacks on the private and independent press in the country.