With little more than four months in power, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has implemented a strategy of harassment and disqualification against media that is causing a polarization of the press in that country, according to journalists Salvador Camarena and Daniel Moreno.
The Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP, for its initials in Spanish) denounced what it considered judicial harassment against Colombian journalist and columnist Daniel Coronell by the former president and current senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez.
In less than four days, two Brazilian journalists received death threats through social networks after publishing reports critical of the country's past and present Armed Forces.
In Brazil, one of the ten countries with the highest rate of impunity in crimes against journalists worldwide, three bills underway in Congress propose to toughen the criminal treatment of perpetrators of violence against journalists and press professionals.
"To do investigative journalism in Latin America and in other parts of the world has two parts: the first part is about the investigation itself with all its great challenges and the second part, which is not talked about much, is the defense of the investigation, and that is almost as complex or sometimes more than the investigation itself," Peruvian investigative journalist Gustavo Gorriti told the Knight Center.
Journalists and media from countries that had elections in 2018, such as Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, Colombia and El Salvador, confronted situations of violence and censorship.
A Mexican journalist receiving protection from the government is alive after being shot twice in the state of Oaxaca.
U.S. Representative Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, introduced a private bill in Congress to grant Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto an immigrant visa or permanent resident status after his asylum case was denied in February.
Journalist Gabriel Hernández was killed on March 17 in the Valle department in southern Honduras, according to local media reports.
Journalist and radio host Santiago Barroso was killed in the doorway to his home in the Mexican state of Sonora on the night of March 15.