According to international organizations, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism. Just this year alone Mexico has registered 10 murders, multiple kidnappings and numerous attacks against the media with guns, grenades and bombs. All of these cases have been compiled in a new map of threats to journalism in Mexico, created by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
Almost two years after crossing the border from Mexico, journalist Jorge Luis Aguirre was granted asylum in the United States, reported La Jornada. The editor of the news site LaPolaka.com had gone into exile after receiving threats when he went to the funeral of slain reporter Armando Rodríguez in Ciudad Juárez. At the time, Aguirre was warned that he was next.
Authorities warned journalist Esteban Rosario that there was a plot against his life, Diario Libre reports. Several alleged killers would have received $25,000 for the reporters’ death.
After being arrested and threatened for reporting on a pedophile ring, Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho has been named the recipient of the PEN International Writer of Courage Prize, according to the Associated Press (AP). She will be honored at an awards presentation in London on Oct. 20.
Prosecutors in the western city of Mendoza opened a case against Víctor Fayad, the city’s mayor, for serious threats he allegedly made to the news director of MDZ Online via text messages last April, Perfil and Los Andes report.
Journalist Marcelo Garay Vergara could be sentenced to up to 200 days in prison for taking unauthorized photos of the Mapuche conflict from inside a farm in Padre Las Casas, in the south of Chile, reported La Nación. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 21.
Similar to the United States' recent denial of a visa for television journalist Hollman Morris to come to Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow, now a second Colombian journalist, Claudia Duque, has had her visa request rejected, according to journalism.co.uk.
Luis Carlos Cervantes, correspondent for Teleantioquia in Tarazá, is being protected by police after receiving anonymous death threats that told him to leave town within 72 hours, reported El Espectador and RCN Noticias.
One day after a shooting attack in Mazatlán, the newspaper Noroeste received new threatening phone calls, including messages demanding $15,000 in exchange for not blowing up the newspaper's building, reported EFE and Noroeste. Employees were evacuated because of the threats.
Paraguayan journalist Rosendo Duarte, correspondent for the newspaper ABC in the city of Salto del Guairá, on the border with Brazil, was threatened during his radio program on Wednesday, Aug. 25, ABC reported.
Alleged members of the organized crime group Los Zetas directly threatened the editors of La Jornada Zacatecas, Imagen, and El Diario NTR– all based in the state of Zacatecas– and demanded they put a letter denouncing the Mexican military on the front page of their newspapers, La Jornada reports.
The Paraguayan Journalists Union condemned an attack against Martín Caballero, a radio announcer from Radio Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in the city of Villa Hayes. The group also came out against attempts to censor the radio station.