The Venezuelan press reported 87 allegations of assaults, intimidation and censorship between January and July, 2011, according to a recent report by the human rights group Espacio Público.
Paramilitary groups represent one of the greatest threats to the press in Colombia, where 84 cases of aggression and harassment against journalists were recorded in the first semester of this year, leaving 104 victims.
Nicaraguan police shot at the truck of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper La Prensa in Managua, Eduardo Enríquez, and then detained him for 12 hours for obstructing a motorcade with the president of the Supreme Electoral Council and "jeopardizing the lives of officials," according to La Prensa.
On Wednesday, July 27, an Ecuadoran court found journalist Freddy Vidal Aponte guilty of fraudulent insolvency after not paying compensation for moral damages to the ex-mayor of Loja, a city south of the capital Quito.
With a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, instructors from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the MEPI Foundation in Mexico City, Mexodus published 20 bilingual reports on the impact immigration has on both sides of the border.
Journalist Carlos Walker was beaten and shot in the legs on Friday, July 29, in Mar del Plata, in eastern Argentina, while he was photographing posters with political propaganda, reported TN.
Unidentified gunmen fired on a Venezuelan state-run television station, Vive TV, in the country's western state of Zulia on Sunday, July 31. leaving two people injured, reported El Universal.
Dominican reporter José Agustín Silvestre for Cana TV was kidnapped and killed Tuesday, Aug. 2, in the city of La Romana, Dominican Republic, local press reported. His body was found near a pond with two gunshot wounds, according to El Día.
Hardly seven months have gone by and 2011 is already the most "tragic year in the last two decades for the Latin American press."
The junior soccer team Atlético Tubarão, located in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, attacked journalist Eduardo Ventura who was covering a game for Rádio Santa Catarina and channel Unisul TV, reported Diário Sul.
Brazil’s Senate president, José Sarney, blocked an attempt to censure Senator Robert Requião, who forcefully took a journalists tape recorder, erased what was on it, and threatened to hit the media worker during an April interview, G1 reports.
Journalist Jaime Quispe, the director of Jornada newspaper in Ayacucho, Peru, received a death threat the same day he published an article about political pressure to release a regional politician’s imprisoned brother, whom he accused of being a member of a blackmail gang, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports.