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.
The Antioquia Journalism Association, APA, requested protection for some journalists in the city of Medellín, claiming that they are the targets of threats and harassment.
The Colombian newspaper El Meridiano de Sucre claimed that copies of its publication were burned on Tuesday, Jan 29, to prevent its distribution.
The president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, has urged the governors and mayors of his country to accept media criticism as a “bucket of cold water” and see if they are doing things well, according to the newspaper El País.
The president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, has urged the governors and mayors of his country to accept media criticism as a “bucket of cold water” and see if they are doing things well, according to the newspaper El País.
After a nine-year legal process that involved several courts, the Supreme Court of Justice in Chile absolved a journalist accused of slander, according to the web portals of Cooperativa Chile and the country's judicial branch.
Concerned about the growing threat of slander and libel lawsuits as tool to censor the press, the Free Press Foundation (FLIP in Spanish) released "Outside Justice: a manual for journalists facing slander and libel charges,".
On Jan. 21, 60 Colombian governors and mayors will sign the Inter American Press Association's (IAPA) Declaration of Chapultepec, according to a press release from the association.
The Free Press Foundation (FLIP in Spanish) and Oxfam demanded the immediate investigation into the latest threat received by Jineth Bedoya Lima, journalist and assistant legal editor for the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
Starting on Thursday, Jan. 17, the Colombian department of Cauca will have a new newspaper in circulation, reported the website Periódico Virtual.
Journalists have not escaped the violence that has dominated life in Colombia over the last several years. According to statistics from the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP in Spanish), 160 reporters were victims of some kind of threat, violence, illegal detention or killing in 2011.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) admitted the case of murdered Colombian journalist Hernando Rangel Moreno, reported the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in a press release on its website on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012.