Although figures on deadly violence against journalists in Colombia continue to decrease – for example, 2016 was the first year of the last seven in which there were no murders of journalists because of their work – the forms of censorship have “mutated” and are far from being overcome in Colombia.
The Peruvian government recently formalized the creation of the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Public Information, whose purpose is to ensure the proper application of the Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information, enacted 13 years ago, reported newspaper La República.
“We are back here after a year, ten months in which this group of journalists, of which I am part, suffered under a blow from censorship that expelled us from Mexican radio.” This is how Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui began the first internet broadcast of the new version of her traditional radio program “Aristegui En Vivo.”
“We are going to make a confession: in Colombia, journalists publish much less than what they know.” Thus begins the promotion video of the newly-formed network of journalists called The League Against Silence, which, through its first activity, is seeking resources to cover the most self-censored issues in the country.
“We are going to make a confession: in Colombia, journalists publish much less than what they know.” Thus begins the promotion video of the newly-formed network of journalists called The League Against Silence, which, through its first activity, is seeking resources to cover the most self-censored issues in the country.
The 2016 election season in Brazil put Ctrl+X, a platform created to monitor lawsuits that demand the removal of content from the internet, to the test. The site found that “electoral lawsuits,” one of the subsets of legal proceedings tracked by the site, increased 33 percent in recent municipal elections in 2016 when compared to the elections of 2012. In many of these cases, politicians and parties go through designated electoral courts to sue journalists and get information removed from the internet.
The detentions of at least two community journalists and attacks on at least two other reporters covering evictions from a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have generated criticisms against the Military Police in this city who are accused of violating freedom of expression.
Researcher Olga Khrustaleva is looking for journalists and activists across Latin America to share their experiences with Internet censorship. Her goal: to map types of Internet censorship in the region and to find out how journalists and activists are changing their behavior as a result.
There is discord between the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales and a large sector of the media, as well as organizations defending freedom of expression, said Edison Lanza, Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), during a visit to La Paz, according to Página Siete.
The main objective of the creation of the Law on Personal Data Protection– enacted on July 11, 2013 and effective in all of its rules since May 8, 2015 – was to protect the personal data of those who feel vulnerable by its publication, like its comercial use by private companies, up to achieving the removal of news related to information in question from the internet.