Americas

Mexican reporter Evaristo Pacheco Solís was found shot to death on Friday in the city of Chilpancingo, in the crime-ravaged state of Guerrero, the Committee to Protect Journalists said quoting news reports. Pacheco, 33, a reporter with the weekly Visión Informativa was shot several times with a small calibre pistol, and his body was left along the side of a rural road, according to local news...

Unidentified gunmen killed radio journalist David Meza Montesinos on Thursday as he was driving in the Honduran city of La Ceiba, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting local press. Meza, 51, a reporter for the local radio station El Patio and a correspondent for national broadcaster Radio America, was shot at about 5:30 p.m. near his home in the coastal city of La Ceiba, 125...

There has been an alarming wave of drug-related violence in the Mexican city of Reynosa, near the Texas border, which is endangering the news media and causing widespread self-censorship, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In the past two weeks, several journalists have been abducted and one reporter has died in unclear circumstances, according to press reports and CPJ interviews...

Two journalists were shot at in Hondursas on Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Unidentified gunmen in the capital, Tegucigalpa, killed a reporter and seriously wounded a colleague, according to local reports. Joseph Hernández Ochoa, who hosted an entertainment program on TV station Channel 51, was driving his colleague Karol Cabrera home around 8 p.m. when two...

A man believed to have gunned down Venezuelan journalist Orel Sambrano in 2009 in reprisal for his reporting on drug trafficking was arrested on Sunday, the local press reported. Venezuelan investigative police, known as CIPC, arrested former police officer David Antonio Yánez Inciarte during a police drug raid in the city of Moron, department of Carabobo, according to local press reports. Yánez...

The Colombian attorney-general’s office Monday directly implicated four senior intelligence officials and the secretary-general of the president’s office, Bernardo Moreno, in the phone-tapping of journalists and other prominent government critics, a scandal that was first exposed in early 2009. This occurred during the trial of Jorge Noguera, the former head of the intelligence agency known as the...

The Salvadorean police have arrested three more suspects in the investigation into documentary filmmaker Christian Poveda’s murder on September 2, 2009, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Their arrests bring the total number of suspects detained to 28. The police say they think a total of 36 people had a part in the killing of Poveda, who had French and Spanish dual citizenship. The...

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez said on Tuesday that those who illegally spy on the press are “enemies of his government” during a meeting with a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP). Uribe issued the statement at the urging of the CPJ and FLIP delegation, which met with the president and top government officials...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday called on the Costa Rican legislature to remove criminal defamation provisions from its penal code after a recent Supreme Court decision eliminated prison terms from its 1902 Printing Press Law. The provisions were eliminated from the Printing Press Law—known as Ley de Imprenta—which imposed prison sentences of up to 120 days for defamation in...

Luis Valdez Villacorta, the former mayor of Pucallpa (the capital of the east-central region of Ucayali), has been acquitted for the second time of masterminding the murder of radio Frecuencia Oriental journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández in Pucallpa on April 21, 2004, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Valdez was acquitted on February 8 by a Lima criminal court at the end of a...