After a TV crew was taken hostage in Paraná, a station invaded in Goiania and eight reporters beaten in São Paulo, on March 10, UNESCO and representatives of Brazilian media corporations delivered a letter to the country’s Minister of Social Communication calling for action to protect journalists and to ensure the media can work safely during the coverage of corruption investigations in the country.
According to witnesses, two people on a motorcycle fired eight shots at a car parked in the garage of Brazilian journalist Kenedy Salomé Lenk in the early morning hours of March 10, reported newspaper O Globo. The journalist, his wife and daughter were asleep inside the house at the time.
Brazilian radio host João Valdecir de Borba, known as Valdão, was killed on March 10 while working in the studios of Rádio Difusora AM in São Jorge do Oeste, southwestern Paraná state.
The director of Venezuelan newspaper Correo del Caroní, David Natera Febres, was sentenced to four years in prison for crimes of defamation and injuria related to reports published in 2013 that denounced cases of corruption in a state mining company, reported nonprofit organization Espacio Público. Natera Febres was given 10 days to appeal the decision.
The new challenges to the implementation of free-to-air digital television in Latin American countries, and its impacts on freedom of expression in the region, were discussed on April 5 during the 157th Period of Sessions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Agência Pública, a prime example of the independent media landscape in Brazil, has launched two innovations during the month of its five-year anniversary: a cultural center to support independent journalism and an unprecedented interactive map on new journalistic initiatives in the country.
The Colombian media may have never talked so much about peace as they did in 2015, when the government and the FARC guerrilla advanced in negotitions to end the armed conflict of more than 50 years. However, this has not translated into decreased attakcs on the press in the country.
Journalist Anabel Flores Salazar was abducted by a group of armed men who entered her home in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico, in the early hours of Feb. 8, according to Animal Político.
Mexico is the third deadliest country for journalists and other media workers in the world with 120 murders in the last 25 years, according to a report from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) that was released Feb. 3.
Journalists in Haiti and the Dominican Republic urged the current Haitian President Michel Martelly to give them all guarantees necessary to properly cover the electoral process, which, they say, is taking place in the midst of attacks on freedom of expression by the outgoing government.
In the continuing saga between Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and cartoonist Xavier “Bonil” Bonilla, the head of state took time out of his weekly national broadcast Jan. 30 to address a recent cartoon published in newspaper El Universo.
With a "humorous and satirical tone" the Andean Foundation for Social Observation and Media Study, known as Fundamedios, launched Censuracom.ec, in which the organization recorded "the most alarming attacks on freedom of expression and of the press" in Ecuador.