Journalists throughout Venezuela celebrated Day of the Journalist on Sunday, June 27. In Caracas, journalists took to the streets, fighting for freedom of expression and an end to attacks against the media, reported El Universal.
As Venezuela prepares to celebrate the Day of the Journalist on Sunday, June 27, journalists in that country have found themselves confronting in the past two weeks numerous challenges to the freedom of expression, according to an analysis in El Tiempo.
Armed men attacked the newspaper Noticias de El Sol de la Laguna in the city of Torreón in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila on Tuesday, June 22, reports El Nuevo Herald.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission intends to establish an area within the organization dedicated to following step-by-step each case of aggression against journalists, reports the newspaper El Universal.
The Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) reports that hackers attempted to sabotage the website of the director of the television program Contravía, Hollman Morris. (See more Knight Center stories about Morris here.) According to a technician's report, the attack used malicious code to link the website to pages associated with junk mail, which could lead the website to being blocked by search engines.
The government offensive against the channel Globovisión isn't stopping. The Venezuelan president warned he could expropriate the television station's shares, increasing pressure against the last opposition channel in the country, reported Reuters.
Violence against journalists in Honduras and Mexico and government actions against the media in Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba, and Colombia were discussed this week at a U.S. House panel on press freedom in the Americas, The Dallas Morning News and AFP report.
Guillermo Zuloaga, the fugitive owner of Venezuela's 24-hour news channel Globovisión, has accused President Hugo Chávez of ordering his arrest to silence his criticism of the government, Reuters reports.
"I've brought my rifle, and I’m going to shoot you,” Mayor Percy Fernández of Santa Cruz warned a TV reporter and a cameraman who had insisted on questioning him about his plan to reorganize the city’s public markets, Los Tiempos and El Mundo report.
Karol Cabrera, a controversial TV and radio host who defended the coup that forced out President Manuel Zelaya last June, won asylum for herself and her two children in Canada, El Tiempo and La Prensa report. (See this Miami Herald article in English.)
Two local police officers and a third accomplice were indicted for last month's kidnapping and torture of journalist Gilvan Luiz Pereira, editor and owner of Jornal Sem Nome (Newspaper Without a Name), in Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, the Diário do Nordeste newspaper reports.
Carmen María de Finol, a reporter for La Mañana newspaper, says she and photographer Yunior Lugo have received anonymous phone calls threatening to take legal action against them. The calls came after the two had reported the burning of tons of expired food that the government had purchased abroad to distribute to the poor, El Nacional and Europa Press report.