Juliana Barbassa, graduate of the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism, returned to campus on Nov. 16 to speak to a group of students and professors about her new book Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink.
Early in the morning on Nov. 10, an unidentified man shot community radio journalist Israel Gonçalves Silva inside a store in Lagoa de Itaenga in Pernambuco state. The journalist had just dropped his children at school. Reports say the man fled via motorcycle without taking anything.
For five years, a group of young people from the periphery of São Paulo, under the supervision of journalist Izabela Moi, faced a challenge: portray their neighborhoods from an "insider’s view," with coverage that went beyond clichés about violence and welfare.
In the context of high levels of violence against journalists in Brazil, which already account for four murders this year, freedom of the press defenders came together around a project that seeks to curb impunity in these crimes. The Brazilian Press Association (ABI for its acronym in Portuguese) and the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj for its acronym in Portuguese) launched "SOS Journalist", a platform for journalists to denounce aggressions and media abuses related to their professional practice, and to ask for and receive state protection.
By the time the Olympic Games start in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5, 2016, the communications team will have spent three years preparing for the influx of more than 30,000 media workers, millions of fans and scores of critics with eyes on Brazil.
A white plaque near Villa Ygatimí, about 26 miles from the Paraguayan border with Brazil, commemorates a journalist and an assistant killed while driving on a dirt highway there a year earlier.
After the Provincial Court of Pichincha in Ecuador denied the appeal for protective action filed by Brazilian journalist Manuela Picq on Oct. 1, her lawyer announced that the case will be presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS).
Simon Romero started at The New York Times in 1999 as a stringer in Brazil. More than 15 years later, he has covered almost every country in Latin America and this week his work will be honored by the Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on the Americas.
The transnational investigative journalism series "Império das Cinzas" (“Empire of Ashes”), about illegal cigarette trafficking in South America, was announced winner of the Global Shining Light Award on Oct. 10.
Colombia dropped off the Committee to Protect Journalist’s (CPJ) 2015 Global Impunity Index that was released Oct. 8, leaving Mexico and Brazil as the sole Latin American countries in the list of the top 14 countries where murderers of journalists “go free.”
Veteran foreign correspondent Lucas Mendes left Brazil for the United States almost 50 years ago. Every week he discusses news about New York City, Washington D.C. and the rest of the world for Brazilians more than 4,000 miles away. For many, he is a link connecting the two biggest countries of the Americas.
Brazilian courts have sentenced a man to almost 30 years in prison for the 2013 murders of two journalists in Minas Gerais, but press advocates urge authorities to look for the masterminds behind the crimes.