ARCHIVES: Americas
A car bomb exploded outside the offices of Televisa, Mexico’s largest media organization, in the early hours of Friday, local time. The attack happened in the capital of Tamaulipas state, Ciudad Victoria, about 220 miles south of the Texas border. Although no one was injured in the blast, according to Carlos Loret de Mola, host of Primero Noticias for Televisa on its channel Canal 2, damage was sustained on the outside of the building and the blast could be felt blocks away, with lights going... MORE
Honduran radio reporter Israel Zelaya Díaz was found shot to death on Tuesday along a rural road near the northern city of San Pedro Sula, the latest in an alarming string of journalist murders in the country. New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Honduran authorities to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into Zelaya's killing. Zelaya, 56, a radio reporter for the San Pedro Sula-based broadcaster Radio Internacional, was last seen... MORE
The alleged mastermind in the 2009 murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano was arrested Thursday last in Colombia and is now facing extradition to Venezuela, local and international press reported. Colombian authorities arrested Walid Makled García in the city of Cúcuta, near the border with Venezuela. A warrant was issued in 2008 for Makled in Venezuela on drug trafficking charges. Venezuelan authorities issued warrants for him last year in connection to Sambrano's murder and for... MORE
An assistant professor of journalism at Western Washington University, whose reporting on a Chicago murder case helped free a man convicted as a teenager of the 1993 crime, does not have to turn over her notes to the police officers accused of framing him, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled, according to Seattle Times . The details: [ Link ] U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman also ruled that the officers have to pay the attorneys fees for Carolyn Nielsen, who wrote about the case of Thaddeus... MORE
Muslims and low social economic standing groups are portrayed too negatively in the US media, pluralities of Americans feel. Negative coverage of the black and Hispanic communities trail closely behind, a new study has revealed. When asked about coverage of Muslims in the news, 40 per cent of the younger generations and 24 per cent of those 65 years and older believed it was too negative. The difference becomes more significant when assessing factors of educations, with 51 per cent of those... MORE
Venezuelan authorities Friday hastily quashed a ban on newspapers printing violent images after a firestorm of criticism from media outlets, rights groups and UN officials who branded it censorship, according to news reports. The announcement, made overnight to the state news agency AVN by the legal director of the public defender's office, Larry Davoe, reversed a court order this week imposing a month-long prohibition on "violent, bloody or grotesque images" in all of Venezuela's press. The... MORE
A new online tool has been released in the US that tries to add political context to news stories. Poligraft, released by the Sunlight Foundation, scans news articles for the names of donors, corporations, lobbyists and politicians and shows how they are connected by contributions. The tool is easy to use: Just submit the URL or text of a news article, and Poligraft creates a sidebar containing the relevant information from data provided by the Centre for Responsive Politics and the National... MORE
Carlos Flores Borja, the manager of Amazonian radio station La Voz de Bagua, travelled all the way to Lima last week because he had been given an appointment with transport and communications minister Enrique Cornejo on August 11 to discuss the reopening of the station, which the government closed 14 months ago. But in the end, Flores was received by deputy minister Jorge Cuba Hidalgo, who told him that the station will remain closed despite the promise that President Alan García gave last May... MORE
Venezuelan prosecutors are investigating El Nacional newspaper after it published a front-page photograph of corpses piled up at a morgue in the capital Caracas, the government said on Saturday, according to local and international news reports. There were 11 dead bodies -- including a child and most of them naked -- in the colour photograph under a Friday headline about deteriorating security in the South American oil producing country. Two prosecutors have been appointed to coordinate the... MORE
A car bomb exploded early Thursday morning outside the building of national Caracol Radio in the capital city of Bogotá, causing serious damage and injuring at least nine people, local new reports said. President Juan Manuel Santos, who took office on Saturday, described the explosion as "a terrorist act," and said it was intended to create a climate of fear. Attorney-General Guillermo Mendoza said the attack was aimed at the radio station, during an interview with Caracol. "It is an act of... MORE
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