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.
Alejandro Aguirre, president of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) said that in Latin America, democratically elected governments are falling to authoritarianism and increasingly restricting press freedom, reported Voice of America.
Omar Rodríguez Saludes, Normando Hernández González and Mijail Bárzaga, who had been arrested in a crackdown on dissidents in March 2003, bring to nine the number of imprisoned journalists released by the Cuban government, reported the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
After spending 19 days behind bars for defamation charges stemming from an article he wrote more than a decade ago, 71-year-old Panamanian journalist Carlos Nuñez was freed from jail Wednesday, July 14, reported EFE and La Estrella.
Representatives from Brazil's media outlets sent a document to Minister Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes, the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs, arguing that "freedom to think and express opinions and information, without control by whomever, is the very essence of democracy," according to Folha de S. Paulo (link for subscribers) and O Globo.
The proposed amendment to the Constitution (PEC 386/09) that would re-establish the requirement for a professional degree in order to practice journalism was approved Wednesday, July 14, by a special commission of Brazil's House of Representatives, reported Agência Câmara. The proposal first must be voted on by the full House before it can go to a vote in the Senate.
In a show of international solidarity, journalism and human rights organizations from throughout the hemisphere are calling on the U.S. government to reverse its ban prohibiting renowned Colombian journalist Hollman Morris from entering the United States to take his place as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
The pro-Chavez Necessary Journalism Movement asked the Venezuelan government to investigate the Institute of Press and Society (IPYS) and Public Space, which according to declassified documents receive millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. government, reported El Universal and El Nacional.
The first seven political prisoners released by the Cuban government landed in Madrid Tuesday, July 13. The prisoners are part of the 75 dissidents who were arrested during a crackdown in 2003, reported The Associated Press and ABC.