Guest post by Lise Olsen, Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) board member from 2007-2011, and director of IRE-Mexico from 1996-1998. Twenty leading journalists gathered in Mexico City on Friday, Feb. 18, to exchange information and discuss ways that Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) can continue to help reporters who, under pressure and often at great personal risk, continue to do investigative reporting on U.S.-Mexico border topics such as children victimized by cartel violence, wasteful government spending, political corruption, cartel operations, as well as the huge economic and social costs of our tw
Bolivia's National Press Association (ANP in Spanish) documented 200 cases of aggression against journalists in Bolivia in 2011, reported the news website Clases de Periodismo.
As presidential elections in Venezuela approach, President Hugo Chavez on Saturday, March 24, criticized the alleged assaults on journalists of the state-run National System of Public Media committed by supporters of the opposition, according to the website for the Venezuelan National Assembly.
Around the world, at least 46 journalists were killed for their work in 2011, and another 35 deaths are being investigated to determine whether they were journalism related, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) annual report documenting attacks on the press, reported the news agency AFP. For the second year in a row, the CPJ report named Pakistan as the deadliest country for journalists, said Radio Free Europe, and CPJ said Mexico is first worldwide for retaliation against reporting done via social media.
The Mexican newspaper El Buen Tono published images and a video from the armed attack the daily suffered more than three months ago, reported the newspaper Milenio on Wednesday, Feb. 15.
The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) has sent a letter of complaint to the Baltimore Police Department expressing concern after police threatened to arrest a citizen videotaping police conducting an arrest, according to the Baltimore Sun and the NPPA Advocacy Committee. Ironically, the incident occurred less than 24 hours after police issued new rules instructing officers not to "prevent or prohibit" people from photographing or taping police actions, another article in the Sun said.
National and international journalism associations denounced the attack that killed Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues, known as Paulo Rocaro, in the early hours Monday, Feb. 13, in Ponta Porã, Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border with Paraguay. Rocaro was editor in chief of the newspaper Jornal da Praça and of the news site Merco Sul News, where he frequently wrote about politics and drug trafficking.
Community radio station, Ibicoara FM, was set on fire the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 8, in the city of Ibicoara, located in the Brazilian state of Bahía, reported the blog Minuto Notícias. The door of the station had been forced open, and all of the broadcast equipment was burned.
Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues was shot to death during an attack the night of Sunday, Feb. 12, in Ponta Porã in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul on the border with Paraguay, reported Última Hora. Police suspect it was a hired killing.
On Friday, Feb. 10, the organization Reporters Without Borders called for a thorough investigation into the killing of Brazilian journalist Mário Randolfo Marques Lopes and his wife, Maria Aparecida Guimarães, reported the news agency EFE. The couple was shot to death in Barra do Piraí, in the state of Río de Janeiro.
With violence, political unrest and impunity increasingly taking hold of Latin America, freedom of expression is constantly being violated in Central American countries, with journalists being threatened, attacked, intimidated, kidnapped, tortured and killed for political, monetary, criminal and ideological motivations.
A reporting crew from the Venezuelan newspaper Últimas Notícias was detained by the Bolivarian Militia in a hospital in the capital, Caracas, on Feb. 8, reported the website Clases de Periodismo.