The Gilberto Velho Media and Drugs reporting prize, which has acknowledged five Brazilian journalists in its third edition, aims to encourage and improve the quality of the public debate on drug policies and legislation in the South American country. The 2016 winners of the prize were announced on Dec. 2.
The 14th Latin American Investigative Journalism Award honored works that uncovered extrajudicial executions in Mexico, violent conflicts over land and timber in Brazil and the trafficking of cultural heritage throughout the region.
A Såo Paulo court recently ruled that investigators could access Matais’ telephone records. The decision was related to a series of reports written by the journalist in Folha de S. Paulo newspaper in 2012. Matais now works at O Estado de S. Paulo.
At least twenty journalists were killed in a plane crash late in the night of Nov. 28 near Medellín, Colombia. The group was accompanying a delegation from the Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense. The team, from the city of Chapecó in southern Brazil, was traveling to play its first match of the final of the South American Cup.
It consists of three floors and 300 square meters on a tree-lined street in Botafogo, in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro. A noble space, inside and out, dedicated to journalism. The facade is old, well-maintained, with pink-painted walls and white details. On the inside, there are high ceilings adorned by a sumptuous glass chandelier. The dark wood floors and windows, as well as the staircase, give off a warm air.
The next Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan or Édith Piaf may be at your side, playing on some corner or subway station, says Brazilian journalist Daniel Bacchieri, creator of StreetMusicMap, one of the most active platforms for street music in the world.
After the implementation of paywalls, Brazilian newspapers had a significant increase in paid digital circulation and audience. From 2014 to 2015, digital subscriptions increased by an average of 27 percent, according to the Instituto Verificador de Comunicação (IVC).
Contrary to common assumptions, the implementation of paywalls – barriers that restricts non-paying users' access to websites – has contributed to growing the audiences of major Brazilian newspapers, which have also recorded a significant increase in the sale of digital subscriptions.
The 2016 election season in Brazil put Ctrl+X, a platform created to monitor lawsuits that demand the removal of content from the internet, to the test. The site found that “electoral lawsuits,” one of the subsets of legal proceedings tracked by the site, increased 33 percent in recent municipal elections in 2016 when compared to the elections of 2012. In many of these cases, politicians and parties go through designated electoral courts to sue journalists and get information removed from the internet.
For the second consecutive year, Mexico and Brazil are the only Latin American countries that are part of the Global Impunity Index by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which was published on Oct. 27.
Following the lead of other fact-checking collaborations in the region, four Brazilian fact-checking projects will harness their collective experiences and talents to analyze an upcoming debate between the two remaining candidates for mayor of Rio de Janeiro.
Journalists from Colombia, Brazil and Cuba are among the nominees for the 25th edition of the Reporters Without Borders-TV5 Monde Prize for Press Freedom.