Brazilian journalist Valério Nascimento was found dead on May 3, after having been shot repeatedly in the city of Rio Claro in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state, iG and the Associated Press report. The crime was the second journalist killed on the same day as the celebrations for World Press Freedom Day 2011.
A total of 68 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, while another 13 remain missing, says a new report by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), El Universal reports.
Estado de S. Paulo reports that its journalist, Gabriel Toueg, was briefly detained by subway security in São Paulo to stop him from recording an altercation between the officers and several young women.
Unlike Mexico, where dozens of journalists have been killed in the last decade, Venezuelan journalists don’t work under a climate of constant threats to their lives, however they do face “systematic” pressure from the government, whose supporters are responsible for 28% of the attacks against the press, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports.
Canal 33 cameraman Alfredo Antonio Hurtado was shot to death Monday, April 25, while riding a bus in Ilopango, El Salvador, El Mundo reports.
Senator Roberto Requião (PMDB) forcefully took Radio Bandeirantes reporter Victor Boyadjian’s tape recorder after being asked about his $15,000 a month pension, O Globo reports. He receives the pension as the former governor of Paraná, a post from which he resigned to run for the Senate.
On May 24, drug traffickers tossed three homemade bombs toward the press team covering a police raid in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, iG reports.
The Agencia de Noticias Fides (ANF) reports its news editor, David Niño de Guzmán, was found dead in an empty lot in La Paz on Thursday, April 21, with his stomach destroyed by a dynamite explosion.
The commentary Kowanin Silva, of the newspaper Vanguardia de Saltillo, wrote here last week [April 18] about the use of social networks to break the information blockade, was very correct, as publishing on Facebook or Twitter helps a newspaper to get information out immediately.
The director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, condemned the April 9 killing of Brazilian journalist Luciano Leitão Pedrosa.
Violence in Saltillo has increased in recent months, putting us in new risky situations where social media is a way to break the silence enforced by criminal groups. It is not the best substitute, but considering the lack of protection journalists in Coahuila state have, there is no other option.
In the face of the threats and dangers journalists confront as increasing violence rocks Mexico, various initiatives have emerged as part of an effort to help protect reporters: group coverage so no one journalist can be singled out, bullet-proof vests, and even self censorship. The most recent protection measure is an accord with guidelines specifying how to cover the drug war.