An engineer and radio host in Acapulco, Guerrero was killed on the evening of Oct. 24 after armed people shot at the news van he was driving while returning from an assignment.
For more than four months, 19 Ecuadorian and Colombian journalists from different media, along with national and international organizations, followed the tracks of three press colleagues abducted and murdered on the border between the two countries earlier this year.
Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz was criminally denounced for aggravated defamation by the Archbishop of Piura and Tumbes, José Antonio Eguren Anselmi. The religious figure accuses Ugaz of having damaged his honor and reputation.
Former military officer Daniel Urresti, who is running for mayor of Lima on Oct. 7, was acquitted as co-author of the murder of journalist Hugo Bustios in 1988.
On Oct. 7, the Brazilian electorate goes to the polls for general elections marked by the intense dissemination of rumors and fraudulent news on social networks, also fomented by the public’s distrust of the press. In this charged political and media environment, journalists have been consistently targeted for doing their investigative and reporting work.
Due to the various attacks against journalist Claudia Julieta Duque and her daughter, María Alejandra Gómez, since 2001, the women presented their case against Colombia before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) this Oct. 1, according to the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP, for its acronym in Spanish)
A journalist in Ceará in northeastern Brazil was shot in the leg and told to stop talking nonsense on the radio.
Last Friday, Sept. 21, marked three months since radio journalist Jairo de Sousa was killed in Bragança, Pará, in northern Brazil, yet no suspects have been identified.
The public prosecutor's office of Chiapas confirmed the detention of a man in connection with the Sept. 21 murder of Mario Gómez, a reporter for El Heraldo de Chiapas in Mexico who was shot in the town of Yajalón while leaving his home to complete some work, according to the paper where he was employed. The official said announcements about others implicated in the case could be forthcoming.
The outgoing government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has assigned 75 million Mexican pesos (US $4 million) to the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists and ensured its operation through the end of the year.