Costa Rica’s highest court temporarily suspended the controversial Information Crimes Law that could send journalists and other individuals to prison for up to eight years for revealing government secrets, reported the newspaper La Nación on Saturday, Nov. 24.
The Bolivian government raided offices and seized broadcasting equipment from a television station in the city of Cochabamba for allegedly failing to meet technical regulations, reported IFEX.
A reporter in Mexico was seriously injured by police in the southern state of Oaxaca after he tried to photograph a conflict between security forces and a group opposed to the mayor of Eloxochitlán, reported Article 19.
Owner and editor in chief of the Brazilian news website Última Hora News, Eduardo Carvalho, was shot to death on the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 21, in the city of Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, reported the website G1.
The International Press Institute (IPI) reported that 119 journalists have been killed in 2012, making it the deadliest year on record since the group started recording the deaths in 1997, the group said on its website Wednesday, Nov. 21.
Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, proposed increasing "democratic controls" over information to transition freedom of expression into a "function of the State" during a press conference on Monday, Nov. 19, according to the news agency EFE.
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.