Americas

Two journalists accompanying a caravan of human rights activists in a tense and often violent indigenous area of Oaxaca state in southern Mexico were reported missing Tuesday after the convoy came under gunfire and two people were killed, press reports said. Érika Ramírez and David Cilia are the two missing reporters from the national newsweekly Contralínea, Zósimo Camacho, a senior editor with...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has voiced deep concern at the killing of Honduran television anchor Jorge Alberto Orellana, the sixth journalist killed in the country since March. Orellana, 50, host of the programme “En vivo con Georgino” (Georgino Live) at the local private station Televisión de Honduras, was shot to death on Tuesday by an unidentified gunman in the city of San Pedro...

Mexican journalist Ramón Ángeles Zalpa, has been missing since Tuesday, according to his family and reports in the local press. Ángeles, a part-time correspondent for the newspaper Cambio de Michoacán in the municipality of Paracho, in western Michoacán, left home in his car around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, his son Romel Ángeles told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The...

Honduran journalist José Alemán fled the country on Sunday after threatening attacks, including the break-in of two unidentified gunmen at his home in the rural municipality of San Marcos de Ocotepeque, near the border with El Salvador, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting local press reports. Alemán, a correspondent for the daily Tiempo and the national broadcaster Radio...

Gustavo Azócar Alcalá, a journalist based in the western Venezuela state of Táchira who had been detained since July 9, 2009, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on March 26 on a charge of “administrative corruption” but was granted a conditional release, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The court acquitted him on charges of embezzling public funds and fraud. The charges...

The conviction on Saturday of four men, including three members of the military police, in the 2007 murder of Brazilian journalist Luiz Carlos Barbon Filho is an important step forward in the global campaign to combat impunity in journalists’ murders, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A court in Sao Paulo sentenced Captain Adelcio Carlos Avelino, Sergeant Edson Luiz Ronceiro...

An Ecuadoran appellate court should overturn the libel conviction of editor Enrique Palacio, and the country’s legislators should reform archaic defamation laws that do not meet international standards for freedom of expression, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Palacio was sentenced Friday to three years in prison in connection with a commentary about a senior government...

Newspaper advertising revenue in the US plunged 27 per cent last year to its lowest level since 1986, according to figures released Wednesday, reflecting the toll of the recession and a media shift that's driving more marketing dollars to the Internet. Newspapers sold $27.6 billion worth of ads in 2009, a figure that includes both print and online revenue. That's down from $37.8 billion the year...

Colombian journalist Clodomiro Castilla Ospino was dead shot on Friday by an unidentified gunman in the northern city of Montería, according to local press reports. Castilla, 50, editor and publisher of local news magazine El Pulso del Tiempo, was reading a book outside his home in Montería around 9 p.m., when an unidentified gunman shot him at least eight times. A second man picked up the...

Unidentified attackers gunned down Honduran journalist Nahúm Palacios Arteaga in the city of Tocoa on Sunday, the third deadly attack against the Honduran press in the last two weeks, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting news reports. "We condemn the murder of Nahúm Palacios Arteaga and urge authorities to swiftly bring those responsible to justice,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ...