Americas

A Guatemalan investigative journalist with leading daily elPeriódico, who recently reported on corruption and human trafficking, has received death threats, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On June 25, two unidentified assailants broke into Marvin del Cid Acevedo’s home in Guatemala City around 10:30 a.m. while the journalist was at work, the local press reported. The...

Husband-and-wife journalists Juan Francisco Rodríguez Ríos and María Elvira Hernández Galena were gunned down Monday in the Internet café they owned near their home in Coyuca de Benítez, in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. Their deaths bring the number of journalists murdered since the start of the year in Mexico to seven. Rodríguez was the local correspondent for two dailies, El Sol de...

A former deputy director of the national Colombian intelligence agency has been ordered held for masterminding the 1999 murder of journalist Jaime Garzón. José Miguel Narváez is currently behind bars awaiting trial in a separate case. The attorney-general’s office issued the order on Tuesday after three former paramilitary leaders implicated Narváez in Garzón’s murder, the national daily El Tiempo...

A 70-year-old Panamanian journalist was arrested and jailed Saturday on a 2008 defamation conviction, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The charges against Carlos Núñez López, stemmed from a 2005 story in the now-defunct weekly newspaper La Crónica about environmental damage in the province of Bocas del Toro, his lawyer, Luis Ferreyra, told CPJ. A landowner alleged his...

A group of armed individuals fired Friday last on the Televisa Laguna station's broadcasting facilities in the city of Torreón, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, according to Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS) and ARTICLE 19. The attack took place minutes after the facilities' workers left the building for lunch and several local media outlets have reported that more than 150...

The Foro de Periodismo Argentino (FOPEA) has expressed concern at the difficulties, harassment and threats that journalists in Bariloche have been facing owing to their coverage of events relating to the assassination of a 15-year-old youth by a police officer. During protests that took place on June 17, both in Bariloche's Alto neighbourhood and in the city centre, several journalists said they...

CNN said Monday that it's no longer using Associated Press content after the two sides could not agree on a contract extension. The AP confirmed that the two news organisations differed on terms for licensing AP stories, photos, video and other content beyond the June 30 expiration of the existing contract. CNN has been an AP customer since the cable network launched in 1980. The details: [ Link]...

The Peruvian Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of Alejandro Carrascal Carrasco, editor of weekly newspaper Nor Oriente, who was sentenced on January 12 to one year in prison on defamation charges. Peru’s Supreme Court overturned a ruling by a court in Bagua, Utcubamba province, the local press said. Carrascal was convicted in January over a series of articles he wrote in 2005 alleging...

An unidentified attacker gunned down TV journalist Luis Arturo Mondragón late Monday night in the city of El Paraíso, eastern Honduras, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Mondragón, 53, owner and news director for the cable television station Channel 19, was shot to death as he left work at around 10 p.m. in El Paraíso, near the border with Nicaragua. A police spokesman...

Venezuelan columnist Francisco “Pancho” Pérez has been sentenced to prison on defamation charges, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Friday, a court in Carabobo found Pérez, a columnist with the daily El Carabobeño, guilty of defaming Valencia’s mayor Edgardo Parra, the local press reported. He was sentenced to three years and nine months. In two columns published in...