The president of Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina, approved the reform to the General Telecommunications law, which extends leases on the current broadcast spectrum for another 20 years and weakens indigenous groups' access to radio frequencies, according to the newspaper Prensa Libre on Wednesday, Dec. 5.
Journalists from the Center for Independent Media in Guatemala claimed they were threatened by employees of the mining company Exmingua, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Radious Gold Group in association with the U.S.-based KCA.
"Maras" and criminal gangs exerted the greatest censorship against the Guatemalan press between July and September 2012, according to a trimester report from the Journalists Observatory of the Center of Informative Reports on Guatemala (CERIGUA in Spanish).
Organization of American States (OAS) Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression Catalina Botero came out against proposed reforms that would limit the power and function of the Inter-American Human Rights System and would affect the defense of freedom of expression in the region, according to the Guatemalan organization Cerigua.
A Guatemalan columnist received death threats against her and her family after denouncing the sexual abuse of girls in a cotton plantation, Cerigua reported.
A Guatemalan judge sentenced the vice-president of the Safety Commission of Panajachel, in the department of Sololá in southern Guatemala to three years and eight months in jail for discriminating against and threatening a journalist, according to the Center for Informative Reports of Guatemala (Cerigua).
After finishing a year at Harvard as a Latin American Knight Foundation Nieman fellow, Guatemalan journalist Claudia Méndez Arriaza created an interactive map "A life is a life." The map pinpoints homicides in Guatemala City, and, aside from visualizing the data, also includes the names of the victims in this capital city, one of the 10 most violent places in the world, where in 2011 106 of every 100,000 inhabitants was killed. Méndez was inspired by the journalism organization HomicideWatch, which aims to highlight homicides in Washington, D.C., as well as the International Symposium on Online Journalism conferen
A Guatemalan journalist accused a Congressman of trying to bribe him with cash, according to the Center for Informative Reports of Guatemala (Cerigua in Spanish).
The online news site Plaza Pública (Public Square), created in early 2011 to bring a "more independent, less superficial" journalism to Guatemala, is aimed at exploring the relations between power and economy, and power and organized crime.
A Guatemalan photographer that was seriously injured during a confrontation between police officers and student protesters is healing well, reported the Center for Informative Reports of Guatemala (Cerigua in Spanish).
A Guatemalan TV reporter was injured while covering the eviction of university student protesters, reported the news agency AFP.
On Thursday, May 31, the first Braille newspaper in Central American was published in Guatemala, reported the news site CNN México. The monthly publication Publinews Braille will be available at no cost in the offices of the Committee for the Blind and Deaf of Guatemala and will be available for 110,000 blind people, according to the radio station Emisoras Unidas.