Televisa cameraman Juan César Martínez was hit in the face and had his equipment taken by members of the federal police as he was covering a confrontation between the authorities and armed gang members in the northern city of of Monterrey, Vanguardia reports.
Two Brazilian journalists who were arrested in Egypt last week were deported back to Brazil over the weekend, Agência Estado reports. Rádio Nacional’s Corban Costa and TV Brasil's Gilvan Rocha traveled to Egypt to cover the political crisis, but Agência Brasil reports that they didn’t manage to produce any stories due to harassment by the authorities.
Dominican Republic journalist Francisco Frías, the director of Cabrera FM and the digital newspaper Prensa Libre Nagua, was shot by the police while covering a funeral, Terra reports.
A Venezuelan court sentenced Francisco Contreras to 15 years in prison for his role in the April 2010 kidnapping of Globovisión journalist Luis Núñez, El Universal reports.
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) announced that in the coming weeks it will present a report to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH) about press freedom violations in the country, AFP reports. In recent months, two newspapers have alleged persecution at the hands of President Daniel Ortega, while an opposition TV network went off the the air several days ago.
A Panamericana Television crew was attacked by a group of thirty people while they covered a protest against a Lima law firm, headed by Orellana Rengifo, with alleged links to organized crime, La República reports. Cameraman Juan Carlos Vera’s right eye was injured by a rock and journalist Renzo Santana had multiple facial wounds, El Comercio explains.
The morning of Jan. 24, a helicopter for TV Globo was shot at three times as it attempted to film images of a police operation in a favela, or shanty town, in northern Río de Janeiro, reported Bom Dia Brasil. The shots to the base, center and tail of the aircraft forced the pilot to make an emergency landing at a nearby airport.
The house of Orley Antunes, editor of the Brazilian newspaper Morretes Notícia, was was the target of a bomb attack on Jan. 17 in the town of Morretes in the southern coastal state of Paraná, reported that same newspaper.
Rosío Flores, a journalist for the newspaper El Diario, was beaten by employees of the city council in El Alto, in western Bolivia, El Diario reported.
A T.V. crew for Milenio Televisión was attacked and restrained by a mob while working on an investigative report outside the ranch of the leader of an electricians union, in the town of Tetepango, north of Mexico City, reported local media.
In 2010, the Mexican media faced a spate of shootings, bombings, and kidnappings, but the new year has inaugurated a more subtle, but nonetheless effective, type of attack on the press: criminals and political groups stealing the identity of media companies to intimidate and spread false information, the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) reports.
The newspaper Novo Jornal reports that its journalists were not allowed to leave the offices of businessman Augusto Caldar Targino, ex director of the Rio Grande do Norte’s consumer protection agency, while he threatened and berated them. (Listen to a recording of the incident in Portuguese here.)