While Mexico is preparing for the general elections on July 1, the recent joint report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations (UN) urges the country’s government to guarantee the safety of journalists covering the electoral process as they are vulnerable to threats and physical aggression by political actors and third parties.
The Peruvian Congress ratified Law 2133, which prohibits official advertising in private media outlets, during the night of June 14. Advocates say it will curb public spending, but critics say it is a form of indirect censorship against media.
This week, the Plenary of the Peruvian Congress may approve a controversial law that prohibits state advertising in private media.
Five years after its implementation, UNESCO's project to train judges, prosecutors and other judicial operators in Latin America on freedom of expression and access to information has become the most ambitious judicial training program in the region and has led to concrete results in the courts
Mexican journalist Héctor González Antonio was found dead on May 29 in Ciudad Victoria, capital of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, according to local authorities.
Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) has set its eyes on television network Globovisión, making it the second media outlet in four days to be put on notice that it must refrain from disseminating messages that disregard the country’s authorities.
During the highly criticized Venezuelan presidential elections on May 20, monitors of freedom of expression recorded physical attacks on journalists as well as intimidation. It’s more of the same for a community of journalists that has been threatened physically, in the courts and online while covering growing political and societal unrest in recent years.
A statement from independent Nicaraguan journalists condemning lethal violence on protesters and attacks on the press, and urging respect for press freedom from the government, has garnered signatures from 35 media outlets, four civil society organizations, 87 journalists and counting.
In Brazil in 2017 there were at least 27 serious violations against communicators, according to a report released on May 3 by the Brazilian branch of international organization Article 19, which is dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression. The information compiled by the NGO annually since 2012 highlights continuing trends in the country: politicians are the main suspects of ordering or carrying out violations; small cities, with up to 100,000 inhabitants, are the main sites of these violations; and radio broadcasters and bloggers are the main victims of the attacks.
As they have every year since 1993, when UNESCO proclaimed May 3 as World Press Freedom Day, journalists and freedom of expression advocates in Latin America and around the world gathered at conferences and rallied online to discuss the importance of press freedom and ways to the threats it faces.
Numerous television and radio news outlets in Nicaragua were attacked or experienced signal interruptions during coverage of the wave of protests that erupted throughout the country due to a reform to the Social Security Law by the government of President Daniel Ortega.
Brazilian journalist Felipe Oliveira has been accused of the crime of promoting terrorism after infiltrating a group of sympathizers of the Islamic State (IS) as part of a journalistic investigation conducted in 2016.