Ecuadoran journalist Martín Pallares said that for some time, executives at the daily newspaper El Comercio had been nervous about comments he made through his personal Twitter account. Yet, he never thought the situation would end with his dismissal. That day came on August 17.
The recent murder of María del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, a physician and citizen journalist known on Twitter for her reports of cartel activity in northern Mexico, has sent shock waves through the state of Tamaulipas and shaken journalists working in citizen news networks across the region.
When talking about politics, the 100 most relevant Colombian journalists with the most followers on Twitter openly share their opinions and are increasingly likely to include links that lead readers to websites other than their own. The findings were announced in a study presented by the University of Texas in Austin at the recent annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Media (AEJMC) in Montreal.
The newspaper industry may be declining, but its number of Twitter followers is not. Among top newspapers in Latin America, Venezuelan and Colombian publications claim the most Twitter followers, according to our recent survey, which included a sample of leading newspapers across the region.
Ecuadorian press freedom NGO Fundamedios sent a letter to Twitter criticizing the company for having complied to remove content depicting or referring to President Rafael Correa that the organization described as public information. Twitter removed the content from its service after receiving several complaints in the last few months from Spanish company Ares Rights, which the Ecuadorian government is currently employing to track alleged copyright infringements online.
With the purpose of bypassing the censorship and self-censorship that ail Venezuelan news outlets since the country's mass protests began in February this year, a group of Latin American journalists developed a new site that taps into social media to inform about the crisis.
During the second edition of his new radio and TV show “En Contacto con Maduro, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro proposed a conference of Twitter users from Latin America and the Caribbean in Caracas, state TV network Venezolana de Television (VTV) reported.
On February 12th, violent protests in Caracas led to the deaths of three people. Eyewitnesses sent video footage and photographs to the newspaper Ultimas Noticias, which then published them online. The footage shows both security forces in uniform and people dressed in civilian clothing opening fire on protesters, quite a different account than the one presented by official media.
After a nine-month hiatus, the English-language news site The Nicaragua Dispatch has relaunched as Central America’s first online hub for community bloggers.
Nicolás Maduro’s government continues to repress the news media in Venezuela. A week after NTN24’s signal was cut mid-transmission and work permits for CNN journalists were revoked, Twitter confirmed to BBC Mundo that the images of the protests published through its service are being blocked in Venezuela.
Two months ago, the Mexican government purchased a 14-page advertorial that ran in TIME magazine. Now, President Peña Nieto will appear on the cover of TIME’s international edition released today, posing above the headline “Saving Mexico”— an editorial choice that has sparked controversy and accusations that TIME has essentially sold good publicity to the Mexican government.
Journalists in several Mexican states and other countries continue to demand the safe release of Veracruz reporter Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz, kidnapped on Feb. 5, through public protests in multiple cities and social media campaigns, according to newspaper El Universal.