UPDATE (3/21/16): A former Colombian paramilitary fighter accused in the May 2000 kidnap, torture and rape of journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima has been sentenced to 28 years in prison. Mario Jaimes Mejía, known as 'El Panadero,' accepted charges against him on Feb. 2. He was sentenced on March 18.
Journalist David Romero Ellner, director of Honduran media outlets Radio Globo and Globo TV, was sentenced on March 14 to 10 years in prison for having committed six crimes of injuria and defamation against former public prosecutor Sonia Gálvez.
Media in the Dominican Republic welcomed a ruling from the country's Constitutional Court that declared as unconstitutional a set of articles that imposed prison sentences on media owners and workers found to be responsible for defamation.
The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Panama rejected an appeal filed by two journalists and an editorial group against an earlier decision concerning a civil lawsuit filed by a former Supreme Court justice, according to La Prensa.
Six years after the 'chuzadas', or illegal wiretapping, of journalists in Colombia scandalized the country, their ghosts reappeared. In recent weeks, information about alleged corruption and abuse within the National Police has been revealed, including the monitoring and unlawful interception of journalists’ communications.
The Venezuelan Supreme Court said that a recent ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to restore the license of RCTV was “unenforceable.” The decision of the I/A Court in the Case of Granier and et al. (Radio Caracas Television) vs. Venezuela, considered that the State of Venezuela violated the rights to freedom of expression and due process of managers, journalists and other employees of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), and ordered the State to restore the channel’s signal and compensate the victims for damages.
Mexican federal court repealed a recurso de amparo, an action to protect an individual’s constitutional rights, launched by journalist Carmen Aristegui after she was dismissed from the MVS radio group. The action was done in order for Aristegui to return to work on the MVS news program First Issue (Primera Emisión).
In Brazil, a country with a history of impunity concerning crimes against journalists, a man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for the 2013 murder of journalist Rodrigo Neto, reporter for newspaper Vale do Aço, in Minas Gerais.
The Association of Journalists of Chile (Colegio de Periodistas de Chile) has called for a change to Chilean law concerning freedom of expression in light of a Supreme Court ruling that upheld a sentence of 18 months in prison for defamation (injurias) for the directors of weekly publication El Ciudadano.
In the latest development of the ongoing fight between Ecuador’s media regulatory agency and newspaper El Universo, the news organization has been fined an amount equal to 10 percent of the newspaper’s average monthly revenue over the previous quarter (about US$ 350,000) for alleged noncompliance with government orders.