The Brazilian government said it will no longer wade into the fight over adding a permanent secrecy provision to the information access law that is pending in Congress, Correio Braziliense and Folha de S. Paulo report. The amendment would allow top-secret documents to remain classified indefinitely.
Press, legal, and human rights groups are united in their opposition to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s decision to allow permanent secrecy for official documents as part of a pending information access law.
The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji in Portuguese) laments the government's change of heart toward a proposed information access law.
After backlash from some government officials, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff has changed her mind about a proposed information access law, and now supports the ability to keep official documents secret forever, reported Terra.
U.S. newspapers should do a much better job covering drug trafficking in their own cities, charged a Mexican editor who argues the drug cartels love nothing better than to limit coverage of their deadly activities.
Several Latin American countries have recently adopted information access laws in order to promote government transparency and facilitate the public’s right to know. While the passage of such laws is certainly an important step, a new report notes that legal recognition does not mark the end to the fight for greater transparency, Sociedad Uruguaya reports.
A bill that would criminalize leaking or publishing information on confidential criminal investigations and trials passed committee in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies May 31, O Globo reports.
In two separate incidents, journalists in Ecuador say they are being targeted for their critical reporting on the powerful. In the first case, Fundamedios reports via IFEX that a prosecutor in the coastal city of Manta is suing five directors and journalists who work for the Ediasa media group for libel over an article reporting allegations that he accepted a bribe.
Fernando Collor de Mello, an impeached ex president and current senator, has once again ruined the government’s plan to quickly pass a law regulating access to classified documents, iG reports.
Journalists in Campina Grande, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba, marched May 17 against the local government for data restrictions adopted by the police and the Institute of Forensic Medicine, PB Agora reports.
Reporting on the illegal narcotics industry and organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean is much more difficult, complex and dangerous than it looks like, according to a new digital book in English and Spanish released by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, in conjunction with the Open Society Foundations.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was just elected to a third term, has received, for the second year in a row, an "F-" in access to information, according to the National Post.