Journalist José Luis Galdámez and his family deserve protection by Honduran authorities, according to an order from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, reported the Associated Press.
Freedom of expression activists spoke out against the island’s Legislative Assembly for trying to prosecute Brent Fuller, a journalist for the Caymanian Compass, for an article criticizing a plan to review the country’s information access laws in closed-door committee hearings.
Editors of Ecuador’s Vanguardia magazine have petitioned a court to order the return of 40 computers confiscated during a police raid on the magazine’s Quito headquarters. See reports in English by the Inter American Press Association and the local NGO Fundamedios.
A court's decision to shut down an online parody of Folha de S. Paulo has drawn international criticism. The site’s name and address parodied Folha de S. Paulo (The São Paulo Journal) with “Falha de S. Paulo” (The São Paulo Failure), which featured criticism and humorous fake headlines from the newspaper. It was taken offline by a September court order, and last week, a São Paulo court upheld the ruling, Portal Imprensa reports.
The National Assembly has expanded the powers of the Venezuelan Executive by granting the president decree powers and the authority to further regulate telecommunications, The Associated Press and Reuters report.
An unprecedented legal ruling announced this week holds Brazil responsible for the forced disappearance of more than 70 opponents of the military dictatorship (1964–1985) and says the government has violated the right of family members “to seek and receive information and to learn the truth.”
Journalists always live in a state of tension with their work. To uncover the truth, journalists must develop not only a broad understanding of issues of public interest, but they must also have the good journalistic sense to be at the right place at the right time to cover a story. However, for journalists who work in zones of conflict, such journalistic competence can mean death.
The Constitutional Court of Peru ruled that media outlets cannot make public secretly recorded phone calls when their content “affects personal or family privacy, or the private life of the intercepted party or third parties, unless it is of public interest or import,” Perú 21 reports.
In recent days Brazil has seen various demonstrations in support of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (ABRAJI) issued a statement supporting the publication of documents from a cache of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, arguing that the information is in the public's interest.
Starting Dec. 14, Venezuela’s National Assembly will begin to work on reforming the Social Responsibility on Radio and Television Law to include internet services and digital media, El Impulso and Europa Press report.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva harshly criticized the arrest of Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website that has been releasing a cache of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables. According to Terra, the president if the first international leader to speak out against the arrest of Assange, who was wanted on rape charges in Sweden. “The guy was only publishing that which he read. And if he read it, it's because someone else wrote it. The blame doesn't belong to who released it, the blame is with who wrote it," Lula said, as quoted by Dow Jones newswire. "So, WikiLeaks, my solidarity for disclosing
In a ruling referring to the so-called “petro-audio”, the Constitutional Court of Peru said newspapers, radios and television stations cannot make public recordings of phone calls that were illegally obtained, reported El Comercio.