José Jordy Veras Rodríguez, an attorney who appears regularly on the "Mañana Boreal" morning TV program on the privately owned Channel 25, was shot when he arrived at the station’s parking lot this week in Santiago de los Caballeros, the country’s second largest city. He was recovering in a local hospital, with heavily armed guards stationed outside the room, Listín Diario and El Nacional report. (See this report in English by Reporters Without Borders.)
On the recent third anniversary of the forced closure of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), whose editorial line opposed President Hugo Chávez, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) released a video of Marcel Granier, RCTV’s general manager, discussing attacks by the government against private media.
In an interview with Argentine daily Página 12, Paraguay's communications minister Augusto dos Santos says the country wants to launch its first state-run TV network in May of 2011.
The station, La Voz de Bagua (The Voice of Bagua), is accused of inciting violence during disturbances in Peru's Amazon last June that left at least 30 people dead, EFE explains.
The country's biggest media outlet announced that it would not report on the disappearance of former presidential candidate Diego Fernández de Cevallos until the investigation has concluded, drawing criticism from media and security experts, CNN México reports. (See articles in English by The Christian Science Monitor and the Associated Press.)
The offices of Televisa’s Canal 2 in Tepic, Nayarit (on Mexico’s central Pacific coast) were attacked with AK-47s and grenades, La Jornada reports. The facilities suffered damage, but neither of the two people in the offices were wounded, Europa Press adds. (See this Associated Press article in English.)
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) invites community radio journalists and citizen reporters from Latin America and Spanish-language radio reporters in the United States to apply for two online training courses about digital media tools, IJNet reports.
President Sebastián Piñera agreed to sell his TV channel Chilevisión to local private equity investors Linzor Capital for $130 million, Dow Jones reports, citing Chilean news reports. (See Spanish version of this post.)
Beto Ortiz, a well-known local media figure, was dismissed from Frecuencia Latina (Channel 2) for “editorial differences,” and his column in Perú21 has been discontinued. In an interview with Dedomedio magazine, the journalist claims that his departure from both media is a way to censor him for his "impertinence" in reporting irregularities in the transfer of ownership of América TV (Channel 4) to the media groups of El Comercio and La República during the administration of President Alejandro Toledo.
The U.S. government’s Radio and TV Martí broadcasts to Cuba reach fewer than 2 percent of people on the island, suffer from poor editorial standards, and have failed to make a meaningful influence on Cuban society, a U.S. Senate Committee reports (PDF) this week. See reports by AFP, the Miami Herald, Washington Post and Inter Press Service.