While Latin American community radios have received greater recognition in their countries since the mid-2000s, they remain limited and discriminated against in practice and by law.
Civil society representatives from Uruguay called on their government to effectively implement the Law of Audiovisual Communication Services (SCA for its acronym in Spanish) and involve them in the development and implementation of the guidelines regulating it.
Civil servants who do not comply with the Law on Access to Information (LAI) in Brazil are not punished, according to a recent report from Article 19 Brazil, an NGO that defends freedom of expression and the right to information. The report was launched in celebration of the five-year law, which became effective on May 16.
The controversial Peruvian bill that seeks to regulate who can hold management positions in media outlets was withdrawn. However, the authors of the project, the congress members of the party Fuerza Popular, Úrsula Letona and Alejandra Aramayo, proposed a new version, La República reported.
Despite the fact that the security of journalists has become a matter of concern for international organizations such as the UN, which even proclaimed a day to encourage the fight against impunity in crimes against journalists, the statistics attacks against these professionals do not appear to be decreasing.
With the goal of preventing misinformation, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, Mexican governor of the northern state of Nuevo León, said he would ask local lawmakers for a law that would force journalists to reveal their sources, according to Proceso.
The Peruvian government recently formalized the creation of the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Public Information, whose purpose is to ensure the proper application of the Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information, enacted 13 years ago, reported newspaper La República.
The controversy generated in Panama by the regulation of a law that gives the executive branch of government the power to impose fines on the media may have arrived at a solution after a meeting between the government and media representatives.
Ecuador’s Communication Law (LOC for its acronym in Spanish) was the subject of a recent conflict between the country’s government and special rapporteurs for freedom of expression of the United Nations (UN), David Kaye, and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), Edison Lanza.
Lawmakers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines passed the 2016 Cybercrime Act on Aug. 12 that provides up to two years in prison for online defamation.
The main objective of the creation of the Law on Personal Data Protection– enacted on July 11, 2013 and effective in all of its rules since May 8, 2015 – was to protect the personal data of those who feel vulnerable by its publication, like its comercial use by private companies, up to achieving the removal of news related to information in question from the internet.
Journalistic associations and professionals in Argentina warn that a bill pending in the legislature threatens freedom of expression in the country. If the initiative is passed, reporters who disclose names and information of people who could be involved in crimes of money laundering and tax evasion could be arrested.