The Information and Communication Superintendence, the government department responsible for regulation the media in Ecuador, decided on Tuesday March 25 to fine Diario Extra 10 percent of its average income for the past three months for failing to rectify headlines in two cases.
Ecuadorian authorities issued last week an order to detain journalist and activist Fernando Villavicencio after he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Villavicencio was found guilty of defaming President Rafael Correa, press freedom organization Fundamedios reported.
The director of the Caracas newspaper, Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, asked the Attorney General’s office last week to open an investigation against Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, his attorney Ytala Hernández Torres and Yurbis Sayago Ramos, notary third of Chacao, for allegedly forging public documents, embezzlement and favoring public officers.
Costa Rica’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court has ruled that intelligence officials broke the law when they tapped into a journalist’s telephone line, the Tico Times reported.
Vicente Massot, owner and director of the conservative, Bahia Blanca-based newspaper, La Nueva Provincia, testified before a federal judge in Buenos Aires on Mar. 8 about his alleged involvement in crimes against humanity during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983).
The trial of 11 persons accused of killing Brazilian journalist and blogger Décio Sá began on Feb. 3 in the Brazilian state of Maranhão – almost two years after the crime took place, Brazilian news organization G1 reported.
The Delegation for Racial and Intolerance Crimes (Decradi) of the Brazilian state of São Paulo will open an investigation into a controversial video posted by the online website Porta dos Fundos to determine if any laws protecting religious freedom were broken, O Globo reported.
Guatemala's central taxation agency will begin next week an audit on newspaper elPeriódico, the daily reported on Wednesday. ElPeriódico called it "fiscal persecution" and the most recent government aggression against it.
A court ordered Guatemalan journalist and director of newspaper elPeriódico José Rubén Zamora Marroquín not to leave the country. His bank accounts were also frozen.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the autonomous regional court under the Organization of American States, has decided for the first time that criminal defamation doesn’t affect freedom of expression in an unprecedented ruling that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called a major setback for the region.
The Jamaican Parliament passed a bill on Nov. 5 that fully abolishes criminal defamation within the nation. The move is unprecedented in the Caribbean, where international and local organizations have pressured the region's governments to draft similar legislation.
Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, the producers of the Mexican documentary “Presumed Guilty,” are facing three different civil lawsuits for over two billion dollars in the Superior Court of Justice in Mexico City (TSJDF).