It was 38 minutes into the professional soccer match at the Santos Modelo Stadium about 275 miles from the U.S. border when players started running from the ball to their locker rooms. Popping sounds interrupted the announcers.
The dismissal of Colombian journalist Daniel Pardo from the online magazine Kien&Ke for publishing an opinion piece about the Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales' influence on the country's media has generated controversy since it was first announced in October.
In the most recent friction between the media and the Ecuadorian government, several security guards and an official blocked a group of reporters from covering a meeting between the Minister of Labor Relations and the National University at Loja Workers Union in the southern city of Loja, on Nov. 12.
The National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ in Portuguese) will launch a commission in January 2013 to investigate the persecution of the press during the military dictatorship in Brazil, reported the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA) called on the authorities to investigate and detain the arsonists who burned a news stand at the beginning of the month in the city of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires province.
The Brazilian government now has a commission to oversee court cases involving freedom of the press, the National Forum of Judicial Authority and Freedom, created on Tuesday, Nov. 13, by the National Judicial Council.
Two reporters in the Dominican Republic could face three months to one year in prison for allegedly defaming the Canadian textile multinational Gildan Activewear, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF in French).
The State University of New York at Oswego drew criticism this week after it suspended – and later readmitted – a journalism undergrad student for misidentifying himself when contacting sources for a school assignment, Poynter reported.
Fighting a court order, the Ecuadorian newspaper La Hora published an apology to the government in its Nov. 14 edition, according to the newspaper El Diario.
Students took to the streets in downtown San José, Costa Rica on Thursday Nov. 15, to protest the country’s recently enacted and much reviled information crimes law, reported the Tico Times website.
Contrary to international conventions on freedom of expression and access to information, defamation cases in Brazil -- a country characterized lately by a high number of judicial cases against the media -- are still resolved in criminal courts.
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA in Spanish) denounced another case of police abuse against a journalist in the northeastern province of Misiones that took place on Nov. 10, according to the group's website.