News

Fifty-two tonnes of newsprint has made its way to Venezuela on a journey that began in Cartagena, Colombia on April 1, and ended, 11 days later in the capital of Caracas. The newsprint was sent from an association of Colombian newspapers wanting to lend a hand to publications heavily affected by a paper shortage. “It’s an impressive gesture of solidarity,” said Miguel Enrique Otero...

Reporters Without Borders has expressed alarm at the communiqué that the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL) of Haiti issued on April 8 condemning “certain” radio stations that “systematically broadcast false information liable to disturb pubic order, destabilise the Republic’s institutions and attack the integrity of many citizens.” The communiqué also reminded the media of...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has hailed Sunday's announcement by the Venezuela prosecutor-general’s office that 97 members of the armed forces and police are to be investigated on suspicion of torture and mistreatment. The move comes after two months of impassioned street protests accompanied by constant clashes between protesters and security forces that have often been violent. Reporters...

Nairobi Pinto, the Globovisión head of correspondants kidnapped by unidentified men on April 6, was released unharmed Monday. At a press conference a few minutes after her release, Pinto said she was not mistreated and thanked the local and international media for the publicity they gave to her abduction, which may have put pressure on her kidnappers. “Pinto’s release is a real relief,”...

Radio Progreso marketing manager Carlos Mejía Orellana was found murdered in his home in the northern city of El Progreso on the night of April 11. He was stabbed several times in the chest. Mejía had worked for the past 13 years for El Progreso-based Radio Progreso, one of the many Honduran media that criticised the 2009 coup d’état. According to he station’s manager, Jesuit priest Ismael...

Rudy Huallpa Cayo, a journalist with local television station Telecultura 7, lost his left eye after being hit by a rubber bullet while covering a protest on April 1 in the province of Melgar, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting news reports. Huallpa was covering a demonstration by residents who were protesting the delay in finishing the construction of a local hospital...

Local and international journalists covering the volatile situation in eastern Ukraine have been harassed, attacked, detained, and had their equipment seized, according to news reports and regional press freedom groups. In the past week, armed men stormed government buildings, raided police stations, and built highway checkpoints in several towns in the eastern regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk, and...

Radio Nizkor’s Claudia Julieta Duque is an investigative journalist who has been harassed, threatened, followed and kidnapped in 2001 after covering fellow journalist Jaime Garzón’s August 1999 murder in Bogotá. She was able to prove in 2009 that the Colombian Department of Security (DAS) was behind most of these intimidations. The criminal proceedings against her alleged torturers are...

The Committee to Protect Journalists congratulates Turkish investigative journalist and book author Ahmet Şık on being awarded UNESCO's prestigious Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. The annual prize, named after slain Colombian journalist Guillermo Cano Isaza, honors a journalist or organization that "has made an outstanding contribution to the defense of press freedom." Şık will...

Swaziland police on Wednesday re-arrested veteran editor Bheki Makhubu and human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko three days after they had been released from prison, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting news reports. The two, who were first jailed on March 18 and held until Sunday, had written articles that criticised Swaziland's chief justice, the reports said. On...