Since the Brazilian Law of Information Access went into effect on May 16, the Brazilian federal government has received 17,516 requests to access documents and other information.
On Thursday, July 19, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador suspended its session scheduled to analyze the legality of the controversial Democracy Code, a regulation pushed by President Rafael Correa that regulates press coverage during electoral campaigns.
The government of Ecuador has received various criticisms in the last few days due to what Reporters Without Borders has called an excess of presidential attacks on opposition journalists for closing several media outlets.
Costa Rican journalists could go to prison for revealing "secret political information" according to a controversial new law, reported the newspaper La Nación de Costa Rica.
The passage of recent legislation in Mexico that allows crimes against journalists to be investigated at the federal, instead of local, level is just a first step toward improving the dire situation currently facing the Mexican press.
The majority of crimes against journalists in Brazil are committed by politicians and the police, said the National Federation of Journalists of Brazil (Fenaj in Portuguese) in a public hearing of the Commission on Public Safety and the Fight against Organized Crime.
Brazil's National Council of the Attorney General's office approved on June 26 a proposal with recommendations for investigations of crimes against journalists to be thorough, fast, and high-priority, reported the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.
The prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago has agreed to review the Caribbean nation's criminal defamation laws, according to the International Press Institute (IPI).
Mexican President Felipe Calderón signed a new law to protect journalists on Friday, June 22, reported the Organización Editorial Mexicana.
On Tuesday, June 12, the Argentine Journalism Forum applauded the new public information access in the Misiones Province of Argentina, which was approved on June 7 by the provincial congress, and said that this "means a significant step forward for freedom of expression, state transparency, and citizens' rights in democracy."
Mexican state legislators approved a constitutional reform that will allow federal authorities to investigate crimes against journalists, reported the newspaper La Jornada on Thursday, June 7. In March, the Senate approved a proposal to make crimes against journalists federal jurisdiction, which before were dealt with locally. But, because this was a constitutional reform, the new measure also required the approval of the majority of the 31 Mexican state legislators.
Two days after the Brazilian information access law went into effect, the Forum on the Right of Access to Public Information (FDAIP in Portuguese) published a recounting of the law's shortcomings and controversies.