The Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Organization of American States (OAS), Catalina Botero, said she was concerned with critics of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the press facing libel suits, license suspensions, and broad “stigmatization,” El Universal reports.
Human rights organizations and freedom of expression groups celebrated Cuba’s release of one of the last jailed dissident journalists. Pedro Argüelles, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2003, was freed last week, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.
The open tension between Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and the press intensified in recent days amid accusations of corruption and conspiracy among the media and allegations of government censorship and freedom of expression violations, reported the local press.
Journalists working for big media companies and their independent blogger colleagues are facing the same problem: the risk of lawsuits for their work.
Just two days after the release of a report on the state of press freedom in Mexico that denounced increasing police and military aggression against reporters, a photographer for the Televisa station was arrested and beaten by security agents in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila on Friday, March 4, reported local press.
Spanish journalists Francisco Gómez Nadal and Pilar Chato agreed to leave Panama after their arrest during a protest by indigenous groups against mining reforms.
Spanish journalists Francisco Gómez Nadal and Pilar Chato agreed to leave Panama after their arrest during a protest by indigenous groups against mining reforms.
Lourival Rodrigues Moraes, a former city councilman of Pontes e Lacerda, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, was sentenced to one year in prison for threatening a journalist last June, according to TV Centro América.
A judge absolved Colombian journalist Claudia López of libel, after accusations leveled against her by ex-President Ernesto Samper (1994-98) prompted by a column in which she suggested Samper was involved in a pair of homicides, reported RCN Radio.
2010 was a year plagued by setbacks for press freedom and threats to journalists worldwide, according to Reporters without Borders’ (RSF) Spanish-language report titled “Freedom of the Press Report Worldwide in 2010.”
Cuban dissident journalist Iván Hernández was freed from prison Saturday, Feb. 18, after spending eight years in jail. His release comes in the latest round of political prisoners being freed, which started earlier this month.
Antônio Carlos Almeida Campelo, a judge in Brazil’s 4th Federal Civil Court in the northern state of Pará, issued an injunction blocking journalist Lúcio Flávio Pinto from publishing any information about a case against several business people in the state, Diário Online reports.