The last journalist detained since the March 2003 “Black Spring” crackdown, Pedro Argüelles Morán, was released from a prison in Ciego de Ávila, his home town, on the evening of 4 March and was reunited with his family, concluding a sad episode in Cuba’s history for Reporters Without Borders. There is now only one journalist in prison in Cuba. It is Albert Santiago Du Bouchet, who was given a three-year jail sentence in April 2009 on a charge of...

Pakistan became the most deadly country for journalists in 2010, with eight colleagues killed during the year in connection with their work. In a year when 42 journalists were killed worldwide, Honduras, Mexico and Iraq also ranked high, the Committee to Protect Journalists says in a year-end analysis. See more world news coverage of CPJ’s report. In Mexico, where crime, violence, and corruption have devastated the country’s journalism, CPJ has confirmed that three journalists...

Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home? Incidents in just the last few weeks range from the...

Editor's Note: No one knows exactly why journalist Armando Rodriguez was gunned down at his home in Ciudad Juarez last November. But his colleagues believe it was a warning to the rest of the local media that writing about drug cartels is a dangerous business. Six months later, journalists are still scared about talking about their experiences reporting. NAM contributor José Luis Sierra interviewed reporters in Ciudad Juarez who spoke on condition of anonymity. Being a journalist in...

Her comments at odds with the court measures recently taken in Venezuela against journalists and media owners have made Venezuelan authorities accuse her of protecting the interests of the "media dictatorship" and "taking active part against governments dissenting of the imperial power." But the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States (IACHR), Colombian Catalina Botero, refused the charges...

In the last seven years in Mexico, 35 journalists were killed and six went missing, 84 media workers filed complaints of insults or attacks in 2007, and in the first few days of 2008, the prestigious independent radio commentator Carmen Aristegui, who has often criticised the powers that be, was fired. Given that outlook, many analysts wonder whether the media in Mexico is really as free as the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón claims. "The record in terms...

A law passed on October 10, 2009 in Argentina that will place controls on the media has generated suspicions that the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner hopes to actually restrict freedom of the press. The Law on Audiovisual Media came up for a vote in the Argentine Senate amidst widespread accusations of vote buying by the current executive. President Kirchner signed the bill in record time despite howls of protest, especially by the owners of Clarín - a...

Reporters Without Borders said today that the last vestiges of independent news were under threat after the de facto government signed a decree yesterday banning “unauthorised” public meetings and giving itself the power to close media “damaging public order” “Three months to the day after the 28 June 2009 coup, basic rights and public freedoms are just empty words in Honduras”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. The coup government was trying...