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.
Martín López, a journalist and host at Canal 44 in Ciudad Juárez, has joined the ranks of media workers who have sought asylum in the U.S. border city of El Paso, after receiving threats from drug traffickers.
Government officials and soldiers from the National Guard took over one of the farms owned by Guillermo Zuloaga, the majority shareholder of opposition TV station Globovisión, El Nacional reports.
The dissident journalist Guillermo Fariñas, who spent four months on hunger strike to demand the release of political prisoners, was released from the hospital and said he wants to continue writing articles, BBC reports.
Prosecutors have asked journalist José Pomacusi, the director of the magazine Poder y Placer (Power and Pleasure) and the TV show No Mentiras (No Lies) to explain his alleged connections to a terrorist organization in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, EFE reports. He has asked the prosecution to "clear his name" and "respect free expression," Los Tiempos adds.
An internal government document classifies journalists as “acceptable” or not depending on their ideology and recommends ways of punishing “unacceptable” journalists, for example, by delaying press releases, the Associated Press reports. The Uruguayan Press Association said the two-year old document, which was publicized last week, is reminiscent of tactics used during the country’s military dictatorship.
Renowned journalist Hollman Morris can now travel to the United States and attend Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow, after the Department of State decided to grant Morris the student visa that it had originally denied him, the Nieman Foundation reports.
President Hugo Chavez announced that his government effectively owns more than a 45 percent stake in Globovisión, a station highly critical of his administration, and that in the next several days he would appoint a member to the channel’s board, Reuters and El Universal report.
Cuban authorities have blocked Yoani Sanchez, author of Generation Y, from traveling to Brazil to see a documentary on censorship in Cuba and Honduras, EFE reports.
La Jornada reports that both the Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Against Freedom of Expression and the National Human Rights Commission (NCHR) are investigating the complaint of photojournalist Irineo Mujica Arzate, who is accusing agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM) of hitting him and stealing his equipment.
The newspaper La Nación and the oil company YPF are engaged in a public fight over the company's advertising policy and the newspaper's editorial agenda, according to the newspaper Los Andes.