The Attorney General's Office of Colombia has opened a preliminary investigation against Bogotá's public TV channel, Canal Capital, related to its coverage of the protests summoned by Bogotá's mayor Gustavo Petro Urrego, the channel said in a press release.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, the Cuban author of the critical blog Los hijos que nadie quiso (also available in English as "The Children Nobody Wanted") completed the first year of detention of his five-year sentence on Feb. 28, reported Reporters Without Borders, calling once again for the blogger’s release from prison.
The United States State Department published on Thursday their annual report on human rights, where it strongly criticized the restrictions on press freedoms and freedom of expression in Venezuela and Ecuador. In the midst of a political crisis in Venezuela, the report highlighted that the Venezuelan government “continued taking actions to impede on freedom of expression and restrict press freedoms.”
Journalists from numerous news media took to the streets in more than 20 Mexican cities on Sunday, Feb. 23, protesting the dangerous conditions faced by the press in the country and especially in the state of Veracruz, news magazine Proceso reported. The main protest took place around the Angel of Independence Monument in Mexico City, where portraits of the 88 journalists who have been killed since 2000 were distributed among protesters.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused foreign media and the U.S. government of misrepresenting the country and of participating in a collective plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government, Bloomberg reported.
Two gunmen shot and killed Yonni Steven Caicedo, a 21-year-old Colombian cameraman for TV Noticias and Más Noticias, on Feb. 19 in the Comuna 12 section of the city of Buenaventura, according to the the Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP).
More than a hundred Honduran journalists and media workers were threatened or attacked between 2010 and 2013, according to a Feb. 18 announcement by the Committee for Human Rights (CONADEH), reported El Heraldo.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the fact that two years after the killing of brother-and-sister journalists Verónica and Víctor Hugo Peñasco, Bolivia’s justice system still has not tried anyone for the murder, even though the prosecution originally arrested ten suspects.
On the night of Feb. 13, journalist Pedro Palma, 47, was shot to death in Miguel Pereira, a town located in rural Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, says news organization G1. The military police say that two individuals on a motorcycle shot Palma three times in front of his home. He died immediately.
César Ríos, director of Argentine newspaper Síntesis, was attacked earlier this month when a group of unknown men threw a home-made bomb to his house in San Lorenzo, in the province of Santa Fe, according to the Argentine Association of Journalistic Entities (ADPEA).
Twenty journalists were attacked, and eleven were arrested during the protests that took place in several cities across Venezuela last week, says a report issued by the Media Workers National Press Union (SNTP).
A group of journalists and defenders of freedom of expression called for Mexican citizens to protest the insecurity and violence faced by press workers in the country on Sunday, Feb. 23. The group announced their call to action through a press statement given in Veracruz on Sunday, Feb. 16.