Colombia started off 2013 with a series of attacks on the press, including death threats against three journalists, censorship at the hands of criminal gangs and the interrupted distribution of a newspaper in the department of Sucre, reported the Press Freedom Foundation, FLIP, in a press release Thursday, Jan. 31.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French) released a report on the status of journalism in Brazil on Thursday, Jan. 24.
Violence and abuses committed against Brazilian journalists during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 will now be closely investigated by the Memory, Truth and Justice Commission, launched by the National Federation of Journalists.
Brazil got off to a tragic start to the new year with the first killing of a journalist in 2013. The new year, however, also saw the launch of the Vlado Journalist Protection campaign, organized by the Vladimir Herzog Institute (IVH in Portuguese).
A new report from Microsoft Research highlights the role Twitter users in Mexico play in reporting violence from organized crime as an alternative to the censorship criminal groups exercise against traditional media.
An anarchist collective claimed that Cuban customs officials confiscated a mail package containing samples of a Venezuelan newspaper, according to the website Havana Times.
On Friday and Saturday, Jan. 18 and 19, Brazil's National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ in Portuguese) will host the International Conference on Human Rights and Journalism, in the city of Porto Alegre.
The obstacles keep coming for the distribution of Colombian-American Santiago Villa's documentary on President Rafael Correa. According to the Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios, YouTube and Vimeo took down the video after the company Ares Rights brought a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
Reporters for Gazeta da Povo, the newspaper of record in Paraná state, Brazil, were threatened with a supposed attack, according to reports from the publication. On Monday, Dec. 17, the newsroom and the management of the newspaper received threatening telephone calls warning about a possible attack.
The Committee for Free Expression, or C-Libre, claimed that a radio station in Honduras censored without explanation a radio spot it paid for advocating the democratization of the broadcast spectrum.
The Institute for Press and Society, IPYS, described a recent change in the legislative decree that regulates the National Defense System as a "serious attack" on the right to access information, freedom of expression and transparency.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo accused two newspapers of conspiring against him after they published a statement from the Central American country's Supreme Court demanding he respect the judicial branch's independence, according to a report from the newspaper La Prensa.