At least 15 journalists were the targets of aggressions from protesters and police officers yesterday in Mexico City while they covered the 45-anniversary of the student massacre in Tlatelolco.
Adílison Oliveira, a journalist at the municipality of Taboão da Serra in the state of São Paulo, was beaten by 10 young men after photographing an accident at a Brazilian state school.
Three years after the killing of Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco, a 21-year-old Mexican photojournalist for newspaper El Diario in Ciudad Juárez in the Northern state of Chihuahua, the investigation into his death remains mired in impunity.
Four Mexican photojournalists reported being victims of police abuse while covering teacher manifestations on Saturday in the state of Veracruz (east of the country), informed Reporters Without Borders. According to the RWB report, agents of the Ministry of Public Safety beat the journalists and took their equipment.
Colombian journalist and attorney Édison Alberto Molina was killed last week in the city of Puerto Berrío in the Department of Antioquia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Molina was attacked on Sep. 11 by unidentified suspects that shot him four times in the head when he was heading back to his house with his wife, who was mildly injured.
The role of journalists as guardians of democracy faces more dangers each and every day due to an increase in organized crime and government repression and corruption in the Western Hemisphere, said Carlos Lauría, the Senior Americas Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), in front of the US House of Representatives Thursday.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) asked Brazilian federal courts on Tuesday to take up the murder case of Brazilian sports journalist Valério Luiz de Oliveira who was murdered in the state of Goiás on July 5, 2012.
As Brazil begins its investigation into claims that the U.S. spied on the communications of President Dilma Rousseff, Brazilian lawmakers are seeking federal protection for journalist Glenn Greenwald and his partner David Miranda, RT.com reported. Legislators say Greenwald and Miranda need to be protected due to the importance of their testimony on the probe.
The Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (Abraji in Portuguese) registered 21 cases of violations against 20 journalists during the protests on Saturday, Sept. 7. Police agents were behind 85% of the attacks -- or 18 cases -- most of which involved the use of pepper spray. The number may increase as more cases are confirmed.
A man involved in the attempted murder of the founder and former editor of the Mexican magazine Zeta was absolved of the charges Thursday.
O Globo, one of Brazil's leading newspapers, penned a historic editorial last Saturday Aug. 31 calling its support for the April 1, 1964 coup that deposed then President João Goulart "a mistake." O Globo, in reference to the June protests across the country that often brought up the newspaper's past relationship to the authoritarian regime, admitted “the hard truth” of its support and billed its change of heart as a response to the “clamor from the street.”
The press corps in Guatemala denounced new acts of agression against reporters in the country. The daily newspaper Siglo 21 claimed that indigenous reporter Lucrecia Mateo was assaulted on Sunday, Aug. 25, when she tried to cover a meeting about the installation of a hydroelectric dam in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetango. A group of opposition protesters beat the reporter and robbed her camera equipment, according to the news agency AFP.