Americas

An independent female journalist probing a child sexual abuse case was recently harassed and assaulted by youths in the Mexican city of Oaxaca, according to delayed reports. On January 29, a group of five or six youths harassed and assaulted independent journalist Verónica Villalvazo, who works under the pseudonym of "Frida Guerrera". At the time of the incident, Villalvazo was walking near the...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has expressed satisfaction at a court ruling in Argentina requiring the government to place official advertising in the newspaper Perfil. At the same time it criticised Guatemala's federal government for suspending state advertising in all print media in the Central American country. In Argentina last week, the government, which has been accused of...

The Buenos Aires Supreme Court has reinstated the life imprisonment sentence against former Pinamar police commissioner Alberto Gómez for his involvement in the January 25, 1997 murder of photographer José Luis Cabezas. This ruling revoked a previous decision by an appeals court that had reduced the original life sentence handed down in 2002 to 24 years in prison. The Foro de Periodismo Argentino...

Press freedom groups in Paraguay have condemned the death threat and assault against Aldo Lezcano, a correspondent for the daily ABC Color in Ybycuí, as well as the assault suffered earlier by Richard Villasboa and Blas Salcedo, of the Canal 13 television station. The Sindicato de Periodistas del Paraguay (SPP) has called on authorities to investigate these incidents and punish those found to be...

A gunman killed a photographer and injured a reporter in the southern Mexican city of Iguala, Guerrero state on Friday last, according to international news reports. Photographer Jean Paul Ibarra Ramírez, 33, from the newspaper El Correo was shot three times and died at the scene. Reporter Yenny Yuliana Marchán Arroyo, 22, from the daily newspaper Diario 21 was hit three times in the legs and is...

Press freedom violations in Colombia have seen a substantial decline. In the past year, there were 130 violations of press freedom. This represents a decrease of approximately 20 per cent compared to 2007, when 162 violations were recorded. In 2008 there were no job-related murders of journalists. This is a fact worth emphasising in a country like Colombia, where more than 130 journalists have

Shepard Fairey, the artist whose “Hope” image of President Barack Obama was added to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, sued the Associated Press over the news company’s copyright challenge to the artwork. The lawsuit Monday in US District Court in Manhattan said Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey did not violate the copyright of the April 2006 photograph because he dramatically...

Newsstand and retail sales of US magazines fell 11 per cent in the second half of 2008, with celebrity and women's titles taking a hit as supermarket and drugstore shoppers cut back on their spending. "Single-copy" sales of magazines in figures released by the US Audit Bureau of Circulations on Monday performed worse than paid subscriptions, which were up less than 1 per cent. Total paid and...

On two occasions, police officers in Tijuana, Baja California, northwestern Mexico, have raided the offices of the local weekly Balún Canán without a search warrant and have threatened and assaulted reporters, ARTICLE 19 and the Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS) have reported. In an interview, Juan Alfonso Ojeda, the editor and founder of Balún Canán, told CENCOS and ARTICLE 19 that...

A Brazilian judge has issued an order calling for the closure of the investigation into the death of journalist Vladimir Herzog. Herzog died while Brazil was under military rule (1964-1984). Federal Justice Paula Mantovani Avelino's decision rejects requests by state prosecutors who have argued that Herzog's murder could be considered a crime against humanity, the Associação Brasileira de...