Journalists in Haiti critical of the government constantly face intimidation and are blocked access to official sources, according to a recent report from the University of San Francisco’s School of Law and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras reported that a Honduran journalist and spokeswoman for a peasant organization received death threats, according to the Mexican news agency Notimex.
After a series of increasingly aggressive threats from an ex-commander of the Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar (ROTA in Portuguese), an arm of the São Paulo Military Police, the newspaper Folha de São Paulo moved its reporter André Caramante to an undisclosed location for his security, reported the newspaper Brasil de Fato.
Venezuela's presidential election will take place next Sunday, Oct. 7. In this period of the campaign, the media landscape in the country is polarized between supporters of President Hugo Chávez and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. An analysis from BBC revealed that while the Venezuelan government has built a media empire of five public broadcasters, the state-run channels have only a slim 5.4 percent of the audience share, according to an investigation by AGB Panamericana.
A journalist from Ecuador was threatened by two men who burst into his newsroom on Sept. 23, reported the Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios. Reporter Alejandro Escudero works for the weekly Independiente in the city of Nueva Loja, a northeastern province in Sucumbíos, the organization said.
A Colombian journalist claimed that criminal gangs he reported on were planning to kill him, reported the newspaper El Meridiano de Sucre.
A Guatemalan columnist received death threats against her and her family after denouncing the sexual abuse of girls in a cotton plantation, Cerigua reported.
The Information Safety bill that is currently being considered by Panama’s National Assembly could represent a threat to freedom of expression in that country, according to several journalists’ unions and associations, the newspaper La Estrella reported.
The United States and Cuba are at opposite extremes of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2012 report. According to the New York-based organization, the United States was ranked the second most “free” country in the world for online expression, while Cuba was listed as the second to worst.
Police arrested a Mexican journalist for recording a confrontation after an election from the window of his hotel room in the city of Motozintla, Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, reported the news agency ANSA.
The Attorney General of Colombia announced on Sept. 26 that it would take preventative measures to protect the fundamental rights of 10 threatened journalists who interviewed an ex-paramilitary leader, reported Caracol Radio.
An Ecuadorian journalist was denied entrance into a press meeting with the country's President, Rafael Correa, at the Teleradio Noticias station after the Secretary of Communication complained that his questions could make some officials uncomfortable, reported Fundamedios.