Márcio Pin and Otávio Alves, the owners of Tribuna do Estado and Vida Mídia newspapers, were arrested May 12 in Brasnorte, Mato Grosso, accused of attempting to extort the city’s mayor, Mauro Rui Heisler, Terra reports.
Journalists covering police protests in the Amazon-region city of Porto Velho, Rondônia on May 7 and 8 were threatened and harassed by several demonstrating officers, Rondoniaovivo reports.
The Office of the Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the recent deaths of two Brazilian journalists: Valério Nascimento and Luciano Leitão Pedrosa, Folha de São Paulo reports.
Five years after its creation, a Portuguese version of the micro-blogging service Twitter is in the works, the site announced. According to Terra, the site is looking to crowdsource the translation to volunteers.
Nearly two years after the requirement to hold a media-related degree to practice journalism was declared unconstitutional by the Brazilian Supreme Court, bills supporting the reinstatement of the requirement are advancing in legislatures nationwide.
Roberto Peixoto, the mayor of Taubaté, São Paulo, blocked street sales of Bom Dia Taubaté on May 10. According to the paper, the audit comes after it published articles on a series of scandals and corruption allegations involving the mayor.
The governor of the central-western state of Mato Gross, Silval Barbosa, asked the press to not publish negative stories about the progress of development projects for the 2014 World Cup, which will be held in Brazil, Olhar Direto reports.
Valdir Cardoso, the Brazilian journalist responsible for the site O Jornal MS, is denouncing the way a judicial order to confiscate one of his videos was carried out, according to the digital newspaper Midiamax. The video in question is about a supposed corruption case involving government officials from the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
In a study launched Monday, May 2, Freedom House classified Brazil as only “partially free” and placed it as the 90th in the world for press freedom and only 22nd (out of 35) in the Americas. What is helping drive this relatively low ranking is the use of the courts to harass journalists.
In a talk to commemorate World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Brazil’s UNESCO representative, Vincent Defourny, called for the passage of a stalled public information access law, G1 reports.
Brazilian journalist Valério Nascimento was found dead on May 3, after having been shot repeatedly in the city of Rio Claro in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state, iG and the Associated Press report. The crime was the second journalist killed on the same day as the celebrations for World Press Freedom Day 2011.
Estado de S. Paulo reports that its journalist, Gabriel Toueg, was briefly detained by subway security in São Paulo to stop him from recording an altercation between the officers and several young women.