More than 10 months after Grupo Clarín begrudgingly presented a plan to split the multimedia conglomerate into six companies to comply with the five-year-old Media Law, the Argentine government has alleged irregularities in the plan.
As if the dangers of covering crime in one of the riskiest regions of the world for journalists weren’t enough, reporters in Northern Mexico now face new obstacles allegedly created by the authorities who were supposed to protect them.
To create more awareness and knowledge in Brazil about the country's young Public Information Law -- which was approved two years ago on May 16, 2012 -- the Brazilian Investigative Journalism Association (Abraji) published this week on its site the guide in Portuguese “Public Information Law -- What you need to know,” with the financial support of UNESCO's International Program for the Development of Communication.
In a case that has generated alarm among local and international journalism organizations, an Argentine editor could face up to 12 years in prison after being charged under the country's Anti Terrorism Law for his coverage of a brutal police arrest and allegedly inciting to violence, newspaper Clarín reported.
After almost three years of discussions and negotiations, a bill proposing a legal framework for internet operations in Brazil was approved by the two chambers of Congress and signed into law by President Dilma Rousseff on April 23 in São Paulo, during the opening of the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance - NET Mundial, Agência Brasil informed.
On Saturday April 26, around 7,000 people formed a human chain in front of Mexico’s Senate in protest of a new proposed communications bill that President Enrique Peña Nieto presented last Monday.
Press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned last week that a recent statement by Haiti’s National Council of Telecommunications (CONATEL) could lead to self-censorship in the country.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) applauded the decision by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to accept a lawsuit filed last year challenging the legality of the country’s controversial Organic Communications Law. IAPA was hopeful the action will refuel the debate over governmental measures set by the law that limit freedom of expression in the country.
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.