Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina signed the document establishing the Program to Protect Journalists, which will be preventative in nature and follows similar examples in Mexico and Colombia.
On World Press Freedom Day, several press freedom organizations underscored the preoccupying increase in attacks against media outlets and journalists around the world that made 2012 the deadliest year for journalists in the last decade.
Three journalists were ejected from a Brazilian construction site where indigenous protesters have paralyzed work on a dam in the Brazilian state of Pará on Friday, May 3, 2013 World Press Freedom Day.
The sons of two Mexican journalists were shot and killed during an armed attack in Chihuhaua City early morning Sunday, news agency EFE reported.
With six countries listed without a free press, including three countries with some of the highest levels of impunity in the world for press crimes, Latin American freedom of expression is at its lowest levels since 1989.
The state police of Coahuila, Mexico have begun the search for journalist Gerardo Padilla Blanquet, reported missing on April 30 2013 in Saltillo.
At least seven journalists belonging to different outlets were wounded by rubber bullets fired by the Metropolitan Police of Buenos Aires at a protest on April 26 2013.
On April 28, 2012, the news spread by word of mouth through a shocked community. Regina Martínez Pérez, correspondent for Proceso magazine, was found dead in her house in Xalapa, Veracruz.
To commemorate the one-year anniversary of the killing of Mexican journalist Regina Martínez, hundreds of journalists in 20 Mexican cities took to the streets on Sunday, April 28 to demand protection for the press and investigations into crimes against journalists. On Storify and Tumblr, journalists published images and text about the unpunished killings and attacks on journalists.
Update 2: Anonymous journalists in Saltillo told the magazine Proceso that a representative from the Coahuila state prosecutor knew in advance where to find the bodies of Martínez and Zamora.
Carlos Manuel Artaza, a journalist in Paraguay was shot five times and killed on Thursday April 25 in Pedro Juan Caballero city, near the capital of Asunción, where he was hospitalized, reported newspaper ABC Color.
In an open letter, NGOs have warned the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, of a possible plan to kidnap a journalist in the state of Veracruz. In the letter, the International Press Institute (IPI) and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) urged Mexican authorities to investigate the situation and take necessary measures to guarantee the journalist’s safety.