A provincial prosecutor in Peru wants four years in prison for Aurora Burgos, the owner of the award-winning, low frequency radio station La Voz de Bagua, for “aggravated theft of the radio spectrum,” the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports via IFEX.
Candidates for Peru’s April 10 election have signed an agreement to guarantee access to public information, promote administrative transparency, and protect freedom of information if they are elected, the RPP radio network reports.
Cameraman Arturo Sandoval, from Canal 2 Frecuencia Latina, was taken to the hospital after being hit by the car driving Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala to a debate in Lima, La República reports.
The Peruvian newspaper Voces was hit with three homemade explosives in the city of Tarapoto, Panamericana Televisión reports.
Peruvian journalist Vicky Peláez, who was convicted of spying on the U.S. for Russian in June 2010, denied the charges and said she only pled guilty to win her freedom, Correo reports.
Journalists and media outlets in the western Peruvian city of Chimbote have joined to protest the president of the Ancash region, who they say is persecuting and harassing reporters who have criticized his government, CPN Radio reports.
The Supreme Court of Peru invalidated a lower court ruling which cleared a former mayor accused of killing a journalist in 2004, La República reports. Luiza Valdez, ex mayor of Coronel Portillo, will be tried again for allegedly masterminding the murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández.
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.
Former TV executive José Enrique Crousillat, who was convicted of selling his station’s editorial line during the regime of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), was returned to prison after being released for health reasons and later turning fugitive.
Peruvian writer and journalist Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature, defended the importance of “free journalism” and stressed the role of the Latin American press in helping diminish the “horrors of the authoritarian past” and supporting the consolidation of democracy, AFP and El Nuevo Diario report.
The Constitutional Court of Peru ruled that media outlets cannot make public secretly recorded phone calls when their content “affects personal or family privacy, or the private life of the intercepted party or third parties, unless it is of public interest or import,” Perú 21 reports.
In a ruling referring to the so-called “petro-audio”, the Constitutional Court of Peru said newspapers, radios and television stations cannot make public recordings of phone calls that were illegally obtained, reported El Comercio.