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.
Edwin Echeverry, part of the communications team for the mayor's office of Medellín is being "tormented" for criticizing on his personal Facebook page the costs of a fireworks spectacular planned to celebrate the bicentennial, according to the Colombian Federation of Journalists (Fecolper).
The Appellate Court of Carabobo state annulled journalist Francisco “Pancho” Pérez's conviction that had sentenced him to three years and nine months of house arrest and a ban on practicing journalism during his sentence, El Carabobeño reports.
Drug trafficking and transnational organized crime are the among the new threats that Guatemalan journalists are facing, according to study on freedom of expression in the country, EFE reports.
The national telecom regulator, Conatel, has urged that the law governing TV and radio broadcasts be modified to include Internet content, El Universal and El Tiempo report.
Luis Horacio Nájera, who won asylum in Canada two years ago, was honored last week in Toronto by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, for his reporting in the violent border city Ciudad Juárez. His Mexican colleague Emilio Gutiérrez Soto and three journalists from Cameroon were also awarded prizes, The Toronto Star reports.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has praised Peru's decision to create a special jurisdiction to prosecute serious crimes against journalists, calling it "of far-reaching importance for the battle against impunity.” Starting this month, the new jurisdiction will try cases of assassination, serious injuries, kidnapping, and extortion of journalists.
Columnist and satirist Laureano Márquez won the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for his independent commentary while under constant harassment from the government of President Hugo Chávez.
The Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Catalina Botero, said access to public information in Brazil is an important tool for understanding what happened during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). She argued that the release of such documents, however, cannot be accompanied by any type of rules on the use of the documents by journalists or other members of the public. "Media outlets have the responsibility to manage news, but beyond guaranteeing access, the law cannot establish restrictions on the use of information,” she said.