Journalists throughout Venezuela celebrated Day of the Journalist on Sunday, June 27. In Caracas, journalists took to the streets, fighting for freedom of expression and an end to attacks against the media, reported El Universal.
Nearly five months after the Jan. 12 earthquake, more than one million Haitians are living in tents and under tarps in some 1,322 camps. Hundreds of thousands have no access to radio or TV, but outdoor screens are going up across the capital, Port-au-Prince, and 16 camps are screening a series of informative, entertaining soap operas that are filling needs for information, The New York Times reports.
The government's new so-called "situation agency" has the power to suppress "any information" deemed of national interest and will likely be seen as a further restriction by the Chávez administration of anti-government news, before legislative elections on Sept. 26, AFP reports.
Something is wrong with access to information if the body responsible for overseeing the law that protects information access in a country asks the government to clearly state that it doesn't intend to impede transparency. This is what has happened in Mexico, where the Federal Institute of Information Access (IFAI) called on the Secretary of Government to ratify that lack of transparency and accountability will not be reinstated, reported El Universal and La Jornada.
More than 100 Brazilian journalists, academics, students, and programmers participated in the First International Seminar on Online Journalism on May 29, 2010, in São Paulo. The gathering was organized by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, Cásper Libero College, and the Brazilian chapter of the Online News Association (ONA-Brazil).
Defense Minister Rubén Saavedra says the military is ready to comply with a Supreme Court order to declassify documents from the military dictatorship led by General Luis García Meza (1980-1981), AFP reports.
Colombians appear to have been more comfortable with continuity than with change by giving President Álvaro Uribe’s former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, a win with approximately 47 percent of the vote, and putting him into a second-round runoff June 20 with Antanas Mockus, the BBC reports. Several media from around the world were surprised by such a decisive win by Santos, after polls had predicted a tie with Mockus, El Tiempo reports (Spanish).
This week marks the sixth anniversary of the country’s transparency and information access law, but some say the way it works in practice leaves much to be desired, BBC Mundo reports.
Journalists and civil society representatives convened for the “Second Platform for Action to Strengthen Freedom of Expression in Central America,” where they identified the principal challenges for exercising this right and listed initiatives to promote it throughout the region.
Journalists and organizations throughout the world marked World Press Freedom Day Monday (May 3). UNESCO's conference in Australia about defending access to information ended with auma declaration asking countries to enact laws "guaranteeing the right to information in accordance with the internationally-recognized principle of maximum disclosure." See more information about the day's events.
In a visit to the city of Sinop, one of the largest logging centers in Mato Grosso state, journalist Andreia Fanzeres asked a resident if she liked living in Amazonia. Her response was disturbing. “I only see Amazonia on television.” The journalist's discovery of the gap between the media's reporting and the knowledge of the local population about deforestation led her to move from Rio de Janeiro to Juína, in northern Mato Grosso, to research the topic.
In a visit to the city of Sinop, one of the largest logging centers in Mato Grosso state, journalist Andreia Fanzeres asked a resident if she liked living in Amazonia. Her response was disturbing. “I only see Amazonia on television.” The journalist's discovery of the gap between the media's reporting and the knowledge of the local population about deforestation led her to move from Rio de Janeiro to Juína, in northern Mato Grosso, to research the topic.