Americas

The Day of the Journalist that Colombia celebrates Tuesday will inevitably be overshadowed by the fact that press freedom is making no progress. Despite government boasts about “successful” measures for protecting the media, endangered journalists insist that they are not any safer and this will not change until the president takes a clear position, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

Three weeks after the earthquake, the Haitian press has just had its first serious run-in with the US military. Homère Cardichon, a photographer working for the daily Le Nouvelliste, had his camera confiscated by US marines Thursday while covering a demonstration by disgruntled residents outside the US embassy in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) urged culture...

Jorge Ochoa Martínez, a Mexican editor and publisher in Guerrero state, died late Friday after being shot in the face, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting local press reports. Ochoa was killed in the town of Ayutla de los Libres after leaving a birthday party for a local politician, a friend and a coworker told New York-based CPJ. A spokesperson for Guerrero’s governor told...

Cuba’s National Revolutionary Police (PNR) arrested Juan Carlos Reyes Ocaña, journalist on the small news agency Holguín Press on January 29 then took him to a police barracks to face charges of “insult”, “disobedience” and “illegal economic activity”. He was released the following day, but has started a hunger strike as he awaits his trial which could mean a prison sentence, Reporters sans...

Venezuelan regulators have ordered cable and satellite operators to stop carrying one of the country’s best known broadcasters, RCTV International, along with five other stations, alleging that the broadcasters violated a requirement to air President Hugo Chávez’s speeches., according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On orders from the National Telecommunication Commission (CONATEL)...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned as an act of political revenge the cancellation of a television station’s licence, seven months after the same action was taken against radio La Voz de Bagua Grande, also in the Amazonas region. Televisión Oriente, based in Yurimaguas in the north-east Peru, lost its broadcast licence on January 15 on the order of the Transport and Communications Ministry...

Radio journalist José Luis Romero’s body was found on January 16 alongside the road from Los Mochis to El Fuerte, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, just over two weeks after gunmen grabbed him while he was out shopping in Los Mochis on December 30 and bundled him into a pickup. Sinaloa state judicial officials said Romero, 40, journalist of Línea Directa, was tortured and then shot in the head...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is setting up a centre of operations for Haitian journalists in Port-au-Prince in order to enable them to cover the earthquake situation and thereby assist the process of providing assistance to the population. Due to be operational by the start of next week, the centre will be equipped with laptops, mobile phones and generators provided by the leading Canadian...

Jaime Flete García, a businessman based in the northern city of Santiago de los Caballeros, was charged on January 12 with hiring two men to murder Normando García, a cameraman employed by Santiago-based TV station Teleunión, on August 9, 2008. The two alleged hit men, José Amauris Santiago and José Agustín Espinal, were also charged with his murder. “In a country where impunity has often been the...

The editor of a Peruvian weekly newspaper in the Amazonian city of Bagua, Utcubamba province, was sentenced on Tuesday to one year in jail on defamation charges, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. Alejandro Carrascal Carrasco, editor of the Bagua-based weekly Nor Oriente, was convicted of charges that stemmed from a series of articles he wrote in...