Before and during the Brazilian presidential election that took place on Oct. 28, journalists were the subject of physical, verbal and digital threats and aggression.
During 2018, 30 journalists have been murdered in the Americas, 20 of them just between April and October. This was one of the conclusions of the 74th General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), held Oct. 19-22 in Salta, Argentina.
Mexico, Colombia and Brazil are among the top 14 countries in the world where the murderers of journalists are not punished in court.
Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto again requested asylum for himself and his son in an El Paso immigration court, 10 years after they turned themselves into a checkpoint at the U.S.-Mexico border and more than a year after their claim was denied.
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)