On Saturday, Feb. 23, two gunmen shot and killed a Peruvian photojournalist for the newspaper El Comercio, reported the website Perú 21. The attack sparked debate about the public's security, the risks journalists run and how the media covers violence.
The Brazilian media company UH News was sentenced to pay over $7,500 in moral damages, according to the court's website.
A Mexican newspaper in the state of San Luis Potosí revealed an audio recording that supposedly catches the governor's spokesman telling his staff to create anonymous social media profiles to dispute inconvenient information, according to the newspaper Pulso de San Luis.
The second witness to the April 2012 murder of Brazilian journalist Décio Sá has died after being shot seven times during an attack in January, said the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.
Two Colombian journalists claimed they were physically and verbally attacked by a former congressman and his wife in the view of police officers, who did nothing to stop the assault, reported the Colombian Federation of Journalists (FECOLPER in Spanish). The attack took place in Sincelejo, Sucre when the two journalists tried to cover a suspected robbery at the home of former Congressman Héctor Vergara, added FECOLPER.
Two Haitian journalists said they were repeatedly beaten by Haitian President Michel Martelly’ssecurity agents when the president visited RFM radio’s headquarters on Tuesday, Feb. 12, reported news site Defend.HT.
The International Press Institute released a statement on Monday, Feb. 18, warning of rising impunity for crimes against journalists in Brazil and insisting the Congress approve a bill that would allow federal authorities to investigate attacks on press workers in the country.
Two international journalism organizations visited Mexico to evaluate the government's measures to protect journalists and the media's own safety strategies when reporting in the country's most dangerous regions, according to a statement from the International Press Institute and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-INFRA).
An exhaustive report from the Committee to Protect Journalists on the situation for journalists around the world placed Brazil and Ecuador among the top ten countries where press freedom suffered the most during 2012, and named Mexico as the country with the most missing journalists in the world.
The Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP in Spanish) celebrated the Day of the Journalist in Colombia on Saturday, Feb. 9, with the release of its 2012 report on the state of press freedom in Colombia. Click here to read the full report (in Spanish).
The Mexican newspaper El Siglo de Torreón announced the release of five of its employees who were kidnapped for 10 hours between the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 7, and the early morning of Friday, Feb. 8.
The owner of radio station Sin Fronteras 98.5 FM Marcelino Váquez was gunned down and killed on Wednesday Feb. 6 in front of his work place in Pedro Juan Caballero, Paraguay, near the border with Brazil, website Paraguay.com informed.