Americas

The conviction for “electoral propaganda” against daily A Folha de São Paulo and magazine Veja after they published interviews with a prospective candidate to municipal elections in São Paulo in southeast Brazil has been described as "absurd". Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said Thursday that the verdict placed an unacceptable limit on press freedom and that reform of the current...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the authorities to reinforce the protection they are providing to Pedro Cárdenas, the editor of the magazine La Verdad, after two men hit him and threatened him with a gun on June 14 in Bogotá in an attempt to dissuade him from distributing the latest issue in Tolima, a department west of Bogotá. Attempts have been made to intimidate Cárdenas in the...

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) has expressed concern at the court decision allowing police to use photographs belonging to the Hamilton Spectator. Officers executed a search warrant on May 6, 2008, in order to obtain photos of a highway blockade in Caledonia. Brian Rogers, representing the Hamilton Spectator, was in court on June 12 to fight the issuing of the warrant, but his...

The trial of the alleged killers of Carlos Quispe Quispe, a journalist on Radio Municipal Pucarani opened Wednesday. The journalist died in Pucarani, in La Paz department, western Bolivia on March 29 after being beaten up by opponents of the mayor. The six defendants, charged with "homicide" and "association to commit a crime", were all in court for the opening of the trial: four municipal...

Javier García, news anchor for the Caracas-based television station Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV), was found dead in his Caracas apartment on Sunday. García, 37, was last seen by friends and family on Friday night, according to local and international news reports. On Sunday afternoon, García’s brother entered the anchor’s Caracas apartment and called the local fire department when...

The publisher and editor of an Urdu-language newspaper in Houston, Pakistan Times USA, has received telephone death threats, and thousands of copies of the free weekly were removed in bulk from dozens of locations in southeastern Texas, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The threats and theft of the papers came after the Pakistan Times USA published an advertisement by the...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has accused the Guanajuato state government in Mexico of discrimination against the newspapers "a.m." and "Correo" in its placement of official advertising, in addition to insulting them and refusing to provide them with information. The state government's actions were seen as revenge for the papers' critical editorial stance. In a letter to Guanajuato...

A criminal bench of the Superior Court of Justice in Áncash on Friday last acquitted Moisés Julca Orrillo, accused of murdering journalist Antonio de la Torre Echeandía on February 14, 2004. According to the Bench's ruling, there is evidence of guilt but no conclusive proof against Julca Orrillo, therefore the presumption of his innocence had to prevail, according to Instituto Prensa y Sociedad...

The 2005 shooting death of a Reuters journalist in the midst of a firefight in Baghdad was justified because US soldiers believed the camera protruding from an unmarked car was a rocket propelled grenade, the Pentagon's internal watchdog has concluded. In an 82-page report, the Defense Department's inspector general also said that Reuters safety practices contributed to the death of sound...

US soldiers who killed a Reuters journalist in Iraq acted within military rules, but the Army's probe of the incident was tainted by its failure to preserve evidence, a Pentagon investigation said on Monday. The Defense Department's inspector general, the Pentagon's watchdog agency, found that U.S. soldiers who fired on a Reuters car in west Baghdad in August 2005, killing Reuters Television...