Americas

Two journalists were killed in Mexico within a span of 24 hours earlier this week, according to delayed reports received by Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Martín Javier Miranda Avilés, a reporter on the daily Panorama and correspondent for news agency Quadratin, found dead at his home in Zitacuaro, Michoacán state in the south-east on July 12. Ernesto Montañez Valdivia, an editor of...

Dozens of regional daily newspapers in Venezuela are at risk of having to halt their presses due to government delays in providing foreign currency needed to import paper, a Canadian Press report has said. The National Union of Press Workers said in a statement Wednesday that more than 50 dailies across the country "are on the brink of ceasing operations due to the lack of paper." Some details: [...

A judge in the northern state of Pará ordered prominent Brazilian journalist Lúcio Flávio Pinto on Monday to pay US$15,000 in damages in a civil libel suit. The decision is part of a systematic pattern of legal harassment against Pinto, who faces more than 10 lawsuits from powerful plaintiffs, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. Judge Raimundo das Chagas Filho in the Amazonian city of...

Colombian police have arrested a man believed to have gunned down veteran radio journalist José Everardo Aguilar in retaliation for his reporting on corruption in southwestern Cauca province, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Friday, the Colombian National Police arrested Arley Manquillo Rivera, also known as "El Huracán," at a routine checkpoint outside the provincial...

An unidentified gunman shot and killed Honduran journalist Gabriel Fino Noriega on Friday in the town of San Juan Pueblo, according to local press reports. Noriega, who worked for local radio station Estelar, TV Channel 9, and as a correspondent for national station Radio América in San Juan Pueblo, 217 miles (350 km) north of the capital Tegucigalpa, was gunned down after leaving the radio...

Gannett Co, the largest US newspaper owner, will slash about 1,400 publishing jobs by July 9 as it copes with declining advertising and circulation, Bloomberg News has reported. Some details: [ Link] “We must take these steps because the advertising environment remains challenged,” Bob Dickey, president of Gannett’s US Community Publishing unit, said today in a memo to employees. The division has...

The hostility of those who staged the coup against President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 and Zelaya’s announced return could further aggravate the press freedom situation. The military’s already significant level of censorship of the international media and national media that oppose the coup has been compounded by the excesses of the media that back it, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. “We...

The Debate newspaper, based in the town of Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, in São Paulo state, was ordered to pay R$593,000 (approx. US$306,000) as a result of a lawsuit for defamation filed against it in 1995 by Judge Antônio José Magdalena. According to a delayed report by the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, the order was passed on June 25. According to the newspaper's owner, Sérgio Fleury Moraes, the...

Honduran military personnel briefly detained seven journalists, temporarily shut down several local broadcasters, and intermittently blocked the broadcast signals of international news channels in the aftermath of the weekend coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Monday, at least 10 soldiers armed with rifles detained seven...

Honduras President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster Sunday by the Army has been followed by a curfew during which the broadcasts of several radio and TV stations were suspended, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. As soon as the curfew had been decreed, the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) notified cable TV operators of a ban on broadcasting certain international TV stations such...