The Colombian Federation of Journalists (FECOLPER) called the closure of the newspaper El Liberal in the city of Popayán, Cauca on Saturday, Dec. 15, a blow to freedom of expression. The loss of the newspaper will leave the region hardest hit by unemployment, poverty and armed conflict without a newspaper, according to a statement from the organization.
Reporters for Gazeta da Povo, the newspaper of record in Paraná state, Brazil, were threatened with a supposed attack, according to reports from the publication. On Monday, Dec. 17, the newsroom and the management of the newspaper received threatening telephone calls warning about a possible attack.
The Institute for Press and Society, IPYS, described a recent change in the legislative decree that regulates the National Defense System as a "serious attack" on the right to access information, freedom of expression and transparency.
El Salvador's Supreme Court declared some of President Mauricio Funes' September 2011 recommendations for the Access to Public Information Law unconstitutional, according to El Faro.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, or PGR — which is in charge of investigating federal crimes like drug and arms trafficking — is now denying journalists access to their facilities all over the country, news weekly Proceso reported.
Costa Rica’s highest court temporarily suspended the controversial Information Crimes Law that could send journalists and other individuals to prison for up to eight years for revealing government secrets, reported the newspaper La Nación on Saturday, Nov. 24.
Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, proposed increasing "democratic controls" over information to transition freedom of expression into a "function of the State" during a press conference on Monday, Nov. 19, according to the news agency EFE.
In the most recent friction between the media and the Ecuadorian government, several security guards and an official blocked a group of reporters from covering a meeting between the Minister of Labor Relations and the National University at Loja Workers Union in the southern city of Loja, on Nov. 12.
Fighting a court order, the Ecuadorian newspaper La Hora published an apology to the government in its Nov. 14 edition, according to the newspaper El Diario.
Students took to the streets in downtown San José, Costa Rica on Thursday Nov. 15, to protest the country’s recently enacted and much reviled information crimes law, reported the Tico Times website.
Contrary to international conventions on freedom of expression and access to information, defamation cases in Brazil -- a country characterized lately by a high number of judicial cases against the media -- are still resolved in criminal courts.
Covering the dramatic collapse of a supermarket roof in Neuquén, Argentina, on Oct. 25, proved to be a challenge for journalists.