A Colombian government agency that fights unfair competition and protects consumers’ rights denied a request from the main Colombian newspapers seeking to stop a news website aggregator from using their content.
The assassination of two Colombian journalists in less than one month has again alarmed the country’s press, which has not forgotten the darker years when – due to drug trafficking and other criminal groups – the number of journalists killed because of their work was high.
The conviction that the Supreme Court of Colombia issued against the former director of the defunct Administrative Department of Security (DAS, by its Spanish acronym), María del Pilar Hurtado, and former Secretary General of the Presidency in the administration of Álvaro Uribe, Bernardo Moreno Villegas, implies a breakthrough in the investigation of cases related to violations of freedom of the press in the country, according to some organizations.
Feb. 17 was a day like any other for Yohir Akerman, former columnist for El Colombiano, until he discovered – while flipping through the pages of the paper – that he had been fired. The reason: claiming that “god was wrong” to reject homosexuality in the Bible in one of his columns.
Advocates are reporting that criminal gangs and paramilitary groups in Colombia, one of the most dangerous Latin American countries for journalists, have been issuing death threats for journalists and human rights defenders for the past two months. Media and government representatives have called for investigation to find the sources behind these threats.
Paraguay, Brazil and Mexico placed in the top 20 deadliest countries for journalists in 2014, according to a special year-end report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Impunity in the murder of journalists is not new in Latin America. In the last decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported 72 instances of journalists killed for their work. About 78 percent of these cases faced complete or partial impunity. But in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, levels of impunity have surpassed those of any other Latin American country, according to CPJ’s 2014 Global Impunity Index.
When talking about politics, the 100 most relevant Colombian journalists with the most followers on Twitter openly share their opinions and are increasingly likely to include links that lead readers to websites other than their own. The findings were announced in a study presented by the University of Texas in Austin at the recent annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Media (AEJMC) in Montreal.
The newspaper industry may be declining, but its number of Twitter followers is not. Among top newspapers in Latin America, Venezuelan and Colombian publications claim the most Twitter followers, according to our recent survey, which included a sample of leading newspapers across the region.
Colombian journalist Javier Dario Restrepo and Mexican journalist Marcela Turati have been announced as the 2014 winners of the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation for New Ibero-American Journalism (FNPI) Acknowledgement of Journalistic Excellence award.
Los Urabeños and Los Rastrojos, paramilitary groups in Colombia, have published hits lists threatening a combined ten journalists with consequences if they don’t immediately abandon their posts and leave the towns where they work.
Award-winning Colombian journalist María Teresa Ronderos will be the new director of Open Society Foundations' Program on Independent Journalism. Each year, the program channels millions of dollars to support independent journalism projects around the world.