In an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, editor Julie Lopez of Plaza Pública in Guatemala speaks about how the online, non-profit news site, aimed at providing an alternative perspective "not subject to political and economic pressures," got started, launching on Feb. 22, 2011. See below the video of her interview (in Spanish).
Plaza Pública is an online, independent, non-profit newspaper that began at the start of this year in Guatemala. In an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, journalist Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, founder and director of the site, described the newspaper as a platform in which citizens can discuss and debate and hold others accountable. Plaza Pública has dedicated itself to investigating and covering topics that the traditional Guatemalan press has considered taboo, such as the agrarian situation, corruption among governments and businesses, and drug trafficking. As Guatemala's presidentia
Guatemalan journalist Lucía Escobar received threats from members of a local security committee after publishing an article on the forced disappearance of a young person in the tourist town of Panajachel, in the western part of the country, reported the Press and Society Institute (IPYS in Spanish).
Guatemalan journalist Claudia Mendez Arriaza, 35, is part of the 2012 class of Nieman Fellows. With 13 years of experience as a journalist -- she has worked as an editor and reporter at elPeriódico in Guatemala, and co-hosted the television show “A las 8:45” -- Mendez was named the 2012 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Latin American Nieman Fellow.
So far in 2011, there have been more attacks on journalists in Guatemala than in 2010, according the annual report from the Center of Informative Reports for Guatemala (CERIGUA).
The former mayor of Copán Ruinas, a Honduran city on the border with Guatemala, received death threats from drug traffickers who believe he acted as a source for the digital newspaper El Faro in El Salvador, El Faro reported.
Plaza Pública, a Guatemalan online newspaper, published U.S. State Department cables obtained from Wikileaks regarding presidential candidate Otto Pérez Molina.
In Mazatenango, Suchitepéquez, south of Guatemala City, two journalists blamed the local mayor for threatening and intimidating them, and being physically and verbally aggressive.
A new grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will help two Latin American journalists extend their Knight Latin American Nieman Fellowships so they can explore projects that may create new ways to keep citizens informed while also enhancing a free press.
The slaying of Argentine folk singer Facundo Cabral after a June 9 concert in Guatemala put the country in the international spotlight. Authorities have reported increasing levels of violence in Guatemala, where the murder rate is more than double that in Mexico, where fights between rival drug trafficking gangs and security forces have left more than 35,000 dead since 2006.