Reporters Without Borders hopes for quick results from the police investigation into yesterday evening’s murder of local radio station owner and manager Marcelino Vázquez in Pedro Juan Caballero, the capital of Amambay, an eastern department that borders Brazil. A marijuana-growing region with a reputation for being dangerous, Amambay is also a leading hub in the trafficking of so-called hard drugs to the Southern Cone countries. Its journalists are constantly exposed to threats,...

Reporters Without Borders is today releasing a report entitled “ ” that examines all of the shortcomings of this South American giant’s media landscape It is based on fact-finding visits to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasilia in November 2012. The media topography of the country that is hosting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics has barely changed in the three decades since the end of the 1964-85 military dictatorship. As well as the ten or so major companies...

Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) launched proceedings on 9 January against the terrestrial television station Globovisión over its broadcast of four clips about the postponement of the inauguration of President Hugo Chavez for a new six-year term, originally scheduled for the following day. The videos are based on a specific interpretation of Article 231 of Venezuela’s Bolivarian constitution. The station was banned from rebroadcasting them and...

Reporters Without Borders urges the Chilean authorities to conduct a full and rapid investigation into yesterday’s burglary of the Santiago home of Mauricio Weibel, the correspondent of the German news agency DPA and Reporters Without Borders and president of the South American Press Correspondents Union. It was no ordinary burglary. Those who broke into Weibel’s home knew what they wanted and found it - Weibel’s laptop containing the files from his investigation into the...

Press photographers Mircea Topoleanu and Brandon Daniel Bazán were finally released yesterday after being held since their arrests while covering major clashes between police and demonstrators in Mexico City during President Enrique Peña Nieto’s swearing-in on 1 December. They were freed along with 54 of the other 69 people arrested during the inauguration-day clashes. The authorities have dropped the public disorder charges on which they were all being held, which carried...

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...

Press freedom groups are demanding that Mexico investigate the shooting death of a freelance journalist just after he reportedly witnessed a confrontation at a highway checkpoint. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says reporter Adrian Silva was found dead in his car Wednesday. Silva had been covering a story on gasoline thefts from Mexico's state-owned oil company. He worked for several publications in the central state of Puebla. The committee said Thursday that Silva was...

HAVANA - Cuban authorities released noted blogger Yoani Sanchez more than a day after she was taken into custody near the eastern city of Bayamo, where she traveled for a Spanish man’s trial over a car crash that killed another prominent dissident. Sanchez said via Twitter that authorities “deported” her and her husband back to their Havana home late Friday night, and that she had been held for 30 hours. “We were released! Thanks to all those who raised their voices...

Reporters Without Borders takes note of the progress apparently being made in the investigation into a shocking arson attack two days ago on a local radio station near Bolivia’s southern border with Argentina, in which station manager, Fernando Vidal, 70, and one of his technicians, Karen Arce, 25, were almost killed. Yesterday the police said they have arrested three men on suspicion of carrying out the attack on Radio Popular FM in the border city of Yacuiba (in Tarija department)....

After learning that local TV presenter Adela Jazmín Alcaraz López has been missing for the past five days in Rioverde, in the north-central state of San Luis Potosí, Reporters Without Borders reiterates its appeal to President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto to pledge to combat impunity in crimes of violence against journalists, With a total of 85 journalists killed and 16 missing in the past decade - including five murdered and three disappeared in 2012 - Mexico...