The decision of the Honduran Congress to allocate the frequency of television channel Canal 8 to the government has prompted criticisms, and the owner of Teleunsa -- which currently operates the signal -- has accused President Porfirio Lobo of plotting to take over the station, reported La Prensa and AFP.
Cuban dissident and journalist Guillermo Fariñas, who in July ended his 135-day hunger strike, is recovering after emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder on Sept. 3, reported AFP and the Miami Herald.
In recognition of the challenges and restrictions she faces as a blogger in Cuba, and her defense of freedom of expression, the International Press Institute (IPI), based in Vienna, has named Yoani Sanchez of its 60 heroes of press freedom. (See also this story from EFE in Spanish).
Luis Carlos Cervantes, correspondent for Teleantioquia in Tarazá, is being protected by police after receiving anonymous death threats that told him to leave town within 72 hours, reported El Espectador and RCN Noticias.
According to C-Libre/IFEX, the harassment against Radio Uno in the city of San Pedro Sula has escalated during the past three months and this week its broadcast signal was interrupted when unknown persons cut the electricity to the station's transmitters.
A man on a motorcycle shot five times at journalist Marco Tulio Valencia who was on his way to his home in Mariquita the night of Aug. 30, reported El Nuevo Día. The bullets hit a wall and window, but Valencia was uninjured.
The prosecution of Bolivia has sued three journalists for "using the media to induce people to commit crimes," stemming from a case of violence and racism against indigenous peasants in the city of Sucre on May 24, 2008, reported Erbol.
In another chapter of the ongoing disputes between the Argentine government and the country's two main newspapers, Clarín e La Nación, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner presented on Friday, Aug. 27, a bill that would make the production, distribution and commercialization of newsprint a "public good," reported the official news agency Télam.
The Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) warned that the sentencing of Peruvian journalist Fernando Santos Rojas to one year in jail for aggravated defamation severely limits freedom of expression.
Ayres Britto, of Brazil's Federal Supreme Court, granted an injunction the evening of Thursday, Aug. 26, against enforcement of a law that censors humor during election campaigns in Brazil. Britto responded partially to a complaint of unconstitutionality, filed by the Brazilian Association of Radio and TV Stations (ABERT), questioning restrictions of the electoral code (Law 9.504/97).
A journalist sentenced to prison, accused of slanderous propaganda and offending the honor of Osmar Calenge, a 2004 candidate for the City Council of Lagoa Santa, in Minas Gerais, entered a request for habeas corpus before the Federal Supreme Court, asking for the sentence to be dismissed, according to the court.
The Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Stations (ABERT), has decided to go to the Federal Supreme Court over two sections of the Election Law: paragraphs forbidding jokes about politicians and the prevention of broadcasters from disseminating opinions about party candidates during campaigns.