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AGAINST A BACKDROP OF TROUBLED ECONOMIES AND DEMOCRACIES, the Americas saw an increase in violent and verbal attacks against journalists during 2001. The number of journalists murdered in the region has grown, with 11 killed for their work in 2001, compared to seven in 2000 and six in 1999. The violence is also occurring in…

BY EXPOSING CORRUPTION, POLITICAL INTRIGUE, and massive abuse of power, journalists in Peru helped bring down the regime of President Alberto K. Fujimori last year. Fujimori’s dramatic fall demonstrated that the Latin American press remains a key bulwark against leaders who continue to use subtle and not-so subtle means to control the flow of information.…

Populism meets the press as Venezuela’s brash new president takes to the airwaves.

Guatemala and El Salvador have both emerged from bloody civil wars fought between conservative central governments and leftist insurgents. And in both countries, the press is beginning to show signs of independence.

Guatemala y El Salvador vienen levantando cabeza de sendas guerras sangrientas libradas entre gobiernos conservadores de persuasión centralista e insurgentes izquierdistas. Y en ambos países, la prensa comienza a dar señales de independencia.

“During the long period of armed confrontation, even thinking critically was a dangerous act in Guatemala, and to write about political and social realities, events or ideas meant running the risk of threats, torture, disappearance and death,” writes the Commission for Historical Clarification in its report on Guatemala’s civil war, which was released on February…

“Investigative reporter Alejandra Matus spent six years researching The Black Book of Chilean Justice. But her book, a historical exposé of the judiciary’s lack of independence, spent less than two days on Chilean bookshelves: On April 14, police confiscated its entire press run at the order of a Santiago Appeals Court judge. That same day,…

Colombian journalists have long been in a no-win situation. If they call for peace or for greater public participation in elections, they risk being targeted by guerrillas or paramilitary death squads. If they report on official corruption, they become targets of powerful political figures or their underworld partners.

On the day Pope John Paul II arrived in Cuba, journalist Ricardo González Alfonso found two agents from the Interior Ministry’s Special Brigades camped on his doorstep. They proceeded to tail Alfonso, a correspondent for the independent news agency CubaPress, until a CNN camera crew arrived at his house the next day.