Mexican authorities are investigating grenade attacks at the offices of media giant Televisa in the cities of Matamoros and Monterrey. The first incident happened in Matamoros the night of Saturday, Aug. 14, and no one was injured. In the case of Monterrey, the attack occurred at dawn on Sunday, slightly injuring two employees and damaging a car and nearby buildings, reported Agencia Reforma and La Crónica de Hoy.
An impending ruling from the Salvadoran Supreme Court has created uncertainty and concern among journalists in the country, and sparked a debate on the limits of freedom of expression, reported El Salvador and El Faro.
Even as violence and kidnappings are pressuring mainstream Mexican media into silence, an anonymous blog that is less than six-months-old has become one of the main sources for news about the country's out-of-control drug war, according to the Associated Press (AP).
Milenio is reporting that the Mexican Public Safety Secretary announced the capture in Durango of five alleged members of the Sinaloa cartel suspected of being linked to the kidnapping of two television videographers and a reporter at the end of last July.
Journalists in the interior of Brazil are complaining of various attacks and threats involving politicians and their parties during the ongoing election period. Journalist Bruno de Lima, from the small state of Paraíba, in the northeast of the country, said he had received death threats after publishing stories about pedophilia in the state, explained Paraíba Agora.
The office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed “deep concern” over threats received by Fausto Rosario Adames, the editor of the now-closed newspapers Clave and Clave Digital, after he had published articles about drug trafficking.
More than 1,000 reporters, editors, camera operators and photographers took to the streets in Mexico City and other towns in 11 states in defense of freedom of expression, calling for an end to violence against journalists, which has claimed at least 64 lives in the last decade, and left another 11 missing, reported the Latin American Herald Tribune and CBS News.
The organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it is important to change parts of the proposed communications law in Ecuador in order to protect freedom of expression.
Colombian Carina Solano Padilla received the Hellman/Hammett grant, from the organization Human Rights Watch, for journalists and writers who have faced political persecution, reported the news agency DPA.
The Prosecutor’s Office has opened a case into this week’s molotov cocktail bomb attack against the offices of the newspaper Las Noticias, El Universal reports.
The editor of the newspaper Correio de Notícias, Afonso Locks, was followed and beaten last week in the city of Cerejeiras (in the state of Rondonia), by persons linked to ex-Mayor José Eugênio Zigue de Souza, reported Folha de Rondônia, where the journalist also is a correspondent.
The government of Hugo Chavez took 32 radio and two television stations off the air last year, and to remember the occasion, journalists, media workers and former employees of the closed stations participated in a demonstration that branded the government's action as "arbitrary and illegal", reported AFP.