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.
At least a fifth of Globovisión - a channel that is critical of President Hugo Chávez’s administration - is now the hands of the government after Venezuela took over a financial company with a significant stake in the network, Bloomberg reports.
The Bolivian government has rejected a proposal to modify two controversial parts of the recently passed anti-racism law that critics say violate freedom of expression, Los Tiempos reports. The petition was written by four press groups who gathered at least 32,000 signatures in support of reforming the law.
Uruguay's president, José Mujica, said he is tired of being asked about the possibility of a potential law regulating the press. In an interivew published by the Argentine newspaper La Nación, the president said he had not received any proposals for such a law, and that if he did, he would throw them in the trash.
Anabel Hernández is pressing charges against Security Minister Genaro García Luna and one of his assistants, Luis Cárdenas Palomino, for an alleged plot to kill her, AFP and EFE report.