Americas

Fourteen media outlets have been fined in 2008 by the electoral courts for publishing interviews with those seeking office in the upcoming municipal elections, scheduled for October, or in some cases, even just their photographs. Electoral judges deemed that the media outlets and the politicians were carrying out election advertising before July 6, the official starting date of the campaign...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has regretted the seizure of three privately-owned broadcast media outlets on July 8 - two Quito-based TV stations (Gamavisión and TC Televisión) and a radio station based in the western city of Guayaquil (Radio Sucre) - which resulted in a few changes to their programming but not in any interruption in their broadcasts. Regardless of the grounds for the state's...

Ecuadoran government agents seized two private television stations early Tuesday morning and shuttered a critical radio station late Monday night. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by allegations that the actions were politically motivated. Members of the government’s Deposit Guarantee Agency (AGD), backed by dozens of police officers, seized the Quito offices of local...

The Chicago Tribune will cut 80 of its 578 newsroom jobs by the end of August, joining other Tribune newspapers that are laying off staff and trimming the size of their papers as they try to save money, according to a report on the paper's website, says Reuters. A spokesman for the paper declined to comment on the report. The cuts amount to nearly 14 per cent of the paper's news staff, and come on...

As the valuations of US newspaper publishers plunge and investor interest wanes, the ranks of stock analysts who rate their performance are thinning, says a Reuters report. Some details: "The fewer analysts you have ... the less information that's distributed, the less appearance there is in the minds of institutional investors," said longtime newspaper analyst John Morton, who runs his own...

Officers of the Institute for Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations (Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas, Penales y Criminalísticas, CICPC) have arrested Isaac Mollera Zárraga, the alleged murderer of journalist Javier García, who was found dead in his flat in Caracas on June 15, according to Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS). García, who was the host of RCTV Internacional television...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed shock at the wave of violence in the northern state of Chihuahua that has cost the life of Candelario Pérez Pérez, a 32-year-old journalist who worked as an editor on his father's crime magazine, Sucesos. Pérez was gunned down in the border town of Ciudad Juárez on June 23. The motive for the murder is not yet known. "So far there is no evidence of a...

Rafael Velasco Salas, deputy director of the bimonthly publication Zona Norte and correspondent in Chiapas for the Oaxaca-based newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen, was assaulted and threatened with murder by Humberto Cernuda Hernández, brother of Josefa Cernuda - the president of the Family Services Unit (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, DIF) of the city of Pichucalco in the state of Chiapas...

The (Baltimore) Sun will cut about 100 jobs, including 55-60 in the newsroom, through buyouts, layoffs and the closing of open positions, says an Associated Press (AP) report. The latest in a series of cuts to the venerable newspaper were announced Wednesday in a memo from publisher Tim Ryan to the newspaper staff. "These actions are necessary for us to remain competitive and win in the future...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed the "transparency" of a US Defence Department report released on June 16 confirming that US soldiers were responsible for the fatal shooting of Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled in Baghdad on August 28, 2005. Khaled drove with Reuters cameraman Haider Kadhem to the Baghdad district of Al-Adil to cover a situation in which an Iraqi police unit had been...