Venezuelan journalist and Globovisión newsroom editor Nairobi Pinto was kidnapped by three masked and armed men on Sunday April, 5 news agency Venezuela Al Día reported.
The Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) in Colombia reported two recent aggressions against a journalist and a photographer by national police agents. These were added to the 57 attacks against the press registered during the first few months of 2014, of which 13, or 23 percent, were committed by police.
On Wednesday, March 26, four weeks after being kidnapped, beaten and threatened as a result of content published in a magazine he directed, Mexican journalist Gilberto Moreno Fontes took his own life in his home in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, according to news agency Proceso.
A criminal court in Honduras convicted three men accused of killing Honduran journalist Alfredo Villatoro in 2012, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) informed.
Ten days after the sudden resignation of the head of Mexico's Mechanism to Protect Journalists Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Contreras, members of the federal agency's independent advisory group revealed that more than half of the cases of threats and attacks against journalists that the Mechanism has received in the last two years haven't been reviewed yet, Animal Político reported.
Almost 200 cases of attacks and violations against journalists' rights were recorded in Argentina during 2013, an increase of 12.79 percent since 2012 and 48 percent since 2008, according to the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA)'s most recent annual report released this week.
Several journalism organizations in Guatemala called President Otto Pérez to push for legal mechanisms to guarantee the safety conditions necessary to allow journalists to perform their duties. The demand comes after four journalists have been killed and 60 assaulted and threatened in the last 15 months.
Reporters from different news media gathered on Sunday Mar. 23 at Plaza Madariaga in Caracas to protest the repression against press workers at the hands of the National Guard.
A joint mission composed by members of several international and Mexican press freedom organizations reported on March 19 the results of their recent visit to Veracruz to investigate the killing of journalist Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz, according to digital newspaper Terra.
Vicente Massot, owner and director of the conservative, Bahia Blanca-based newspaper, La Nueva Provincia, testified before a federal judge in Buenos Aires on Mar. 8 about his alleged involvement in crimes against humanity during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983).
Last week Brazil's Secretary of Human Rights Maria do Rosário announced new recommendations to protect journalists, which would include providing a Federal Police security detail to threatened journalists, reported news portal A Tarde.
The first year of Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency was the most violent year for Mexican journalists since 2007, according to freedom of the press organization Article 19’s annual report published on Tuesday, March 18.