At least five privately-owned local and community-based media organizations in three South American countries have been the targets of violent attacks in the past few weeks, depriving some of them of the means to broadcast. Reporters Without Borders is committed to helping them rebuild. The press freedom organization is seeking a detailed breakdown of the estimated damage they have suffered. In view of the extent of the losses, we are requesting assistance from the authorities in the...

Independent journalists Alejandro Amado Fraustro and Estela Morales were released on bail yesterday, along with other people who had been arrested arbitrarily during street demonstrations in Mexico City on 1 September. But the two other journalists who were arrested on 1 September, Gustavo Ruíz Lizárraga and Pável Alejandro Primo Noriega, have been transferred to a Mexico City detention centre until a judge sets bail for them. The trial for all four journalists is still...

Reporters Without Borders and the CERIGUA Journalists’ Observatory deplore radio programme host Luis de Jesús Lima’s murder yesterday in the Zacapa province. He was the third journalist to be killed in Guatemala since the start of the year. Like the previous two victims - Luis Alberto Lemus Ruano and Jaime Napoleón Jarquín Duarte - Lima was slain in the southeast of the country, a region where criminal violence is on the rise and journalists are increasingly...

Reporters Without Borders calls on the authorities to do everything possible to shed light on the murder of Alberto López Bello, a newspaper reporter whose body was found alongside that of a policeman yesterday in Trinidad de Viguera, a town near the southern city of Oaxaca. Both had been shot dead. The two were last seen alive earlier yesterday in a downtown Oaxaca bar. No message was left by their killers. Aged 28, López had been covering crime for the past six years for El...

Reporters Without Borders supports a proposed broadcast media law, known as the or Ley de Medios, which Uruguay’s Chamber of Deputies began considering on 22 May and which is due to be submitted to the Senate by the end of the year. The media freedom organization therefore regrets the pressure that some media groups have recently been exercising in an attempt to delay or block adoption of this bill, which could weaken their dominant position. The provisions and goals of Uruguay’s...

Reporters Without Borders today submitted recommendations on Chile to the UN Human Rights Council (see document below), which is due to discuss the country during the 18th Universal Periodic Review in January and February 2014, shortly after the November presidential election. This process consists of a review of human rights achievements by UN member countries and, if necessary, a reminder of their responsibilities in this area. Reporters Without Borders calls on Chile to enact new laws to...

Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned about the fate of Aníbal Barrow (picture), a journalist who was kidnapped in the northern city of San Pedro Sula on 24 June, four days ahead of the anniversary tomorrow of the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Barrow, 58, was travelling in a pickup with members of his family on the afternoon of 24 June when they were stopped by several unidentified individuals, who made Barrow’s relatives get out and then drove off...

Around 20 journalists have reportedly been physically attacked or injured in the past two weeks of protests in Brazilian cities against bus and subway fare hikes and the poor state of public services. The military police appear to have been responsible for most of these , which in some cases have been accompanied by arrests. But some cases were the result of hostility on the part of demonstrators towards news media covering the protests. As the protest movement has grown, fed by online...

The situation for freedom of information continues to be extremely tense two months after Nicolás Maduro’s election as president on 14 April. Pluralism under threat One of the most high-profile cases is that of Leocenis García , the editor of the weekly Sexto Poder , who began a hunger strike outside the headquarters of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) in Carabobo on 6 June in protest against privately-owned Atel TV’s suspension in Maracaibo (in...

Reporters Without Borders is today releasing a video interview in which Verónica Basurto Gamero, a young independent journalist who used to be based in Mexico City, explains why she had to flee abroad at the start of March. She also criticizes the new Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which failed to protect her from dangers arising from her journalistic work. Set up in October 2012 and overseen by the interior ministry, the Federal...