On the evening of Wednesday, May 8, investigative reporter Lourenso Véras received threatening text messages saying that he was on a list of people to executed in the frontier region between Brazil and Paraguay.
With the aim to broaden the debate on journalists' security, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, and the United Nations Information Center in Rio de Janeiro launched the website Segurança de Jornalistas (Journalists' Security in English) on May 3, World Press Freedom Day.
Three journalists were ejected from a Brazilian construction site where indigenous protesters have paralyzed work on a dam in the Brazilian state of Pará on Friday, May 3, 2013 World Press Freedom Day.
Dignitaries, heads of states, journalists and advocates arrived in San José, Costa Rica yesterday, Thursday, May 2, for the welcoming reception of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s World Press Freedom Day conference.
With six countries listed without a free press, including three countries with some of the highest levels of impunity in the world for press crimes, Latin American freedom of expression is at its lowest levels since 1989.
Officially launched in Brazil in December 2007, today digital TV covers 46.8 percent of the country, according to data from the National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL). What does this mean less than three years out from the end of analog TV broadcasting – which, by decree, is set to end in July 2016? What is the federal government planning to reach the remaining 53.4 percent before the deadline?
Brazil has a big lead as the country with the most government requests to remove online content by judicial order in the latest Google Transparency Report, released on Thursday, April 25. In the period between July and December 2012, the search giant received 1,461 court-ordered requests from governments around the world to remove content, including YouTube videos and search results, with nearly 43 percent of them coming from Brazilian authorities.
Carlos Manuel Artaza, a journalist in Paraguay was shot five times and killed on Thursday April 25 in Pedro Juan Caballero city, near the capital of Asunción, where he was hospitalized, reported newspaper ABC Color.
On Friday, April 19, the chief of police in Minas Gerais confirmed the participation of police officers in the killing of two journalists in Vale do Aço, reported the website R7. Members of the civil and military police are under investigation for the killings.
A photojournalist was shot to death on Sunday evening, April 14, in the city of Coronel Fabriciano, Minas Gerais, reported Estado de Minas. Walgney Assis Carvalho, 43 years old, was a freelancer for the newspaper Vale do Aço, the same publication where slain reporter Rodrigo Neto worked. Both worked the police beat and were known for denouncing crimes involving law enforcement. This is the fourth case of a journalist killed in Brazil so far in 2013.
The average Brazilian journalist is a woman, white, college educated with a major in journalism and not affiliated with unions, non-governmental organizations or political parties. This is, generally speaking, the profile of the country's journalists, according to research released on Thursday, April 4, by the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ in Portuguese) and the Post-Graduate Political Sociology Program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC in Portuguese).
Luiz Carlos Azenha, journalist for the Brazilian news network Rede Record and editor of the blog Viomundo, was ordered to pay nearly $15,000 in moral damages to TV Global's news and sports director, Ali Kamel, reported the website Consultor Jurídico.