Ecuador's National Council on Telecommunications (CONATEL in Spanish) unilaterally suspended a television station's broadcasting license in the southern Amazonian province of Morona Santiago, according to Fundamedios.
Senator and ex-Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Melo defended an amendment to a freedom of information bill that would keep "ultra secret" documents exempt from release, reported Folha de São Paulo.
The head of the National Penitentiary Institute of Peru, Wilson Hernández, denounced irregularities in security protocol when the prison allowed the press several interviews with Antauro Humala.
Plaza Pública, a Guatemalan online newspaper, published U.S. State Department cables obtained from Wikileaks regarding presidential candidate Otto Pérez Molina.
The Forum for the Right of Access to Public Information sent a letter to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff asking her to speed up the voting process on a public information bill being debated in the Senate.
Every day dozens of celebrities worldwide are hounded by the press for scoops on things like alleged plastic surgeries, pregnancies, or their romantic lives. A member of Chile’s House of Deputies, inspired by recent press harassment faced by a former beauty queen, believes that journalists have gone too far and that their behavior needs to be reined in.
In a July 12 ceremony in Washington, D.C., Brazil and the United States outlined a new multilateral initiative, the "Open Government Partnership" (OGP), which aims to find ways to combat corruption and promote transparency, according to a U.S. State Department statement and the newspaper O Globo.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, criticized Brazil's resistance to dealing with its past and the way that state information is being handled, O Estado de S. Paulo reports.
On July 7 and 8, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) will hold a seminar on policies regulating access to public information in Brasília.
Some scholars link the presence of a freedom of information law in a county to its level of social and economic development. After all, the first country to pass such a law was Sweden, a nation that charts highly on human development indices. The second was Finland, another place considered among the best in the world to live. The United States was the third country to pass a law guaranteeing access to public information.
Internet users and media rights activists in Brazil organized a June 21 marathon of Twitter posts to call for improved infrastructure and expanded access to broadband Internet, Rede Brasil Atual reports. The hashtag #minhainternetcaiu (myinterenetisdown) and the phrase “Broadband is your right!” were both among the most posted topics in Brazil that day, Link do Estadão explains.
Two Mexican journalists who risk their lives covering the illegal drug trade along the U.S.-Mexico border will receive the 2011 Knight International Journalism Award, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) announced June 22.