Survey of laws and bills that curb and punish disinformation and fake news on the Internet shows growth in Latin American countries. Experts warn of the risk of censorship and self-censorship of journalists.
Between January and June of 2020, Voces del Sur, a Latin American initiative, registered 630 aggressions against the press in the region. These went on the rise or worsened after governments issued a health emergency.
Election coverage is perhaps one of the biggest challenges in newsrooms: processing large volumes of information in a short time and with the same team that works in everyday conditions.
The case of the Uruguayan site Amenaza Roboto is remarkable. Within a year, the multimedia platform that covers science and technology produced in Latin America for a Spanish-speaking audience has paid all its bills.
After a little more than eight months of preparation and arriving at agreements between organizations that support the new data verification initiative in the region, Uruguay has joined the fight against misinformation with the launch of fact-checking site Verificado.uy on July 22.
All political parties with representation in the Uruguayan parliament are set to sign an Ethical Pact against misinformation on April 26. The initiative was born of the Uruguayan Press Association (APU) with the purpose of politicians committing to "not generate or promote false news or disinformation campaigns to the detriment of adversaries" in the next electoral contest, reported Observacom.
During the research panel “Digital media and democracy in the Americas” at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) on April 12, three scholars shared their research and unveiled the limits of journalism in holding the powerful accountable across in Uruguay, Cuba and Chile.
United not only by cultural and geographical similarities, but also by the type of problems that their countries face politically, economically and socially, seven journalistic organizations have formed the Voces del Sur alliance to systematize the monitoring freedom of expression in their countries.
Uruguayan newspaper la diaria, born in 2006, is an atypical case in the Latin American media environment. Its experience offers a sum of innovative elements in areas such as journalistic formula, business model and the media-audience relationship, among others.
Uruguay is the most recent country to propose a comprehensive media law to update for the 21st century the norms and regulations overseeing its communications. In May, President José Alberto “Pepé” Mujica sent the proposed bill to the Uruguayan legislature. The Senate is expected to vote on it by the end of the year.