Tim Lopes

This week CPJ congratulated the House sponsors of a bill that would expand the breadth and depth of the State Department's annual reporting to Congress on press freedom abuses worldwide. The Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act passed the House last month; now the bill is being redrafted for the Senate by the Committee on Foreign Relations. CPJ, in the July 8 letter to Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Mick Pence (R-IN), who are also co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press, urged the Senate to pass the legislation appropriately named after the late Wall Street Journal reporter.

Powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, gangsters in Brazilian slums, paramilitaries in Colombia, and violent street gangs in El Salvador and Guatemala are terrorizing the press. Self-censorship is widespread. By Carlos Lauría

New York, July 28, 2008--Armed and hooded men threatened three Brazilian photographers covering a weekend visit by Sen. Marcelo Crivella, a Rio de Janeiro mayoral candidate, to a poor city neighborhood. The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Brazilian authorities to ensure that journalists covering sensitive issues such as drug trafficking and organized crime are able to work freely and without fear of reprisal.

New York, June 2, 2008--The Committee to Protect Journalists is shocked by allegations that a paramilitary group with links to local police kidnapped and tortured two journalists and a driver working undercover in a Rio de Janeiro slum. CPJ called on Brazilian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation.

"We are appalled by O Dia's allegations that two of its journalists and a driver were kidnapped and brutalized," said CPJ's Americas Senior Program Coordinator Carlos Lauría. "Brazilian authorities must thoroughly examine allegations linking the captors to local police, and they must bring those responsible for this crime to justice."

By Ann Cooper

BRAZIL

Brazil's constitution guarantees free expression and prohibits censorship.
But in practice, the news media are impeded by defamation lawsuits so common they're known as the "industry of compensation" and by lower court judges who routinely interpret Brazilian law in ways that restrict press freedom.

Authorities won important convictions in the recent murders of two journalists, although Brazil remains a dangerous country for the press. Four journalists have been killed for their work in five years. As in much of Latin America, journalists who work in large government and business centers such as Brasília, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro often enjoy more protection than their colleagues in impoverished, isolated regions of the Amazon and the northeast. In the country's vast interior—where the influence of government is weak and that of drug trafficking and corruption, strong—journalists censor themselves for fear of retaliation.

New York, May 25, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today’s conviction of a suspected drug lord in the brutal 2002 slaying of Brazilian investigative reporter Tim Lopes. A jury in Rio de Janeiro also sentenced the defendant, Elias Pereira da Silva, to 28 and a half years in prison, according to press reports.

Although Brazilian media outlets generally operate in a free environment, they have increasingly been targeted with defamation lawsuits that seek to silence them. Judicial interference and censorship, under the guise of protecting privacy and honor, continues unabated.

Economic and political turmoil throughout Latin America in 2002 had profound implications for the region's press. Sharp decreases in advertising revenue bankrupted many media outlets, while the failure to consolidate democratic reforms left the media vulnerable to legal and physical assault. Five journalists were killed in Latin America in 2002 for their work.

Workers Party (PT) candidate and former labor leader Luiz Inácio da Silva, known as Lula, won presidential elections in October, defeating the ruling coalition's candidate by a wide margin and becoming Brazil's first president not to come from the country's political and economic elite. In previous elections, the country's leading newspapers and television networks opposed Lula and his party. However, in the weeks leading up to the transfer of power, scheduled for January 2003, the press gave him and the PT more favorable coverage, prompting some commentators to speculate that ailing media companies want to improve relations with Lula to enlist his support for a possible financial bailout.