The Ecuadorian government has asked cartoonist Xavier Bonilla, known as Bonil, to appear before the Superintendent of Information and Communication and explain the contents of an editorial cartoon published in newspaper El Universo that officials are calling defamatory. Seven months after Ecuador’s new Communications Law came into effect and created the office of the Superintendent, Bonil is the first media worker to be summoned by the new agency.
Trinidad and Tobago’s House of Representatives passed on Jan. 24 a bill that partially decriminalizes defamation. The bill will now proceed to the Senate for consideration.
A controversial state secrecy law quietly passed by Honduran lawmakers last week was suspended Friday Jan. 17 after strong backlash from civil society groups including Reporters Without Borders, who said the law unduly restricted freedom of information.
The Law on Secret Information, discreetly adopted by the Honduran parliament on Jan. 13, endangers Hondurans’ access to public information and the transparency of their new government, according to various human rights organizations like Reporters Without Borders.
After the purchase of more than half of editorial group Epensa's shares, which gave Grupo El Comercio control over almost 80 percent of the newspaper market in Peru, the topic of media concentration has become ubiquitous -- and volatile -- in the country. It dominates the public debate with virtually a new article or opinion piece every day, and last week, the opposing sides of the debate over the potential negative effects of the transaction were illustrated by the disagreement between award-winning Peruvian writer and former presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa and his son Álvaro.
Journalist Juan Carlos Simo, member of the Argentine Journalism Forum (Fopea), sat down with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and talked about transparency in his country and other issues during the 11th annual Austin Forum
Journalism organization Reporters Without Borders criticized Chilean President Sebastián Piñera's veto of the Chilean Digital Television Law considering it a "deviation from the idea of pluralism, [one that] favors the economic interests of a few at the cost of real pluralism," said the group's website.
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 biggest obstacles to transparency in Latin America and the Caribbean are the region’s enduring culture of secrecy, the infrequent use of right-to-information laws and the lack of training on how to use them effectively
For Bolivian investigative journalist Raúl Peñaranda, a columnist and former director of the independent newspaper Página Siete, access to information in his country is extremely limited.
The Argentine media conglomerate Grupo Clarín has drafted a plan to comply with the country's media law that would consist in dividing its audiovisual licenses between six business units.
The President of Peru, Ollanta Humala, enacted the Computer Crimes Act last week, which criminalizes the unauthorized creation and use of electronic databases, among other things, with up to five years in prison. Several lawyers and journalism organizations have criticized the law, saying it will endanger Peruvians' right to freedom of expression and information.