Americas
2018
Ahead of inauguration day, Brazilian media braces for Bolsonaro
Long before one of their photographers was harassed on election night in Brazil, the editors at Fortaleza newspaper O Povo were meeting with their readers and staff to discuss the increasingly polarized environment and how to deal with it.
Nicaraguan police raid independent news station, arrest two journalists
New York, December 22, 2018–Nicaraguan police last night entered the offices of 100% Noticias, a privately owned cable and internet news station in Managua, ordered the station off the air, and arrested the channel’s director Miguel Mora and news director Lucía Pineda Ubau, according to news reports. In a court appearance this morning, authorities charged…
Severed human head and threat left outside Tamaulipas newspaper office
Mexico City, December 21, 2018–Mexican authorities must immediately take all necessary actions to guarantee the safety of journalists in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, after a severed human head was left outside the offices of a local newspaper, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
More journalists killed on the job as reprisal murders nearly double
Journalists from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to the U.S. were targeted for murder in 2018 in reprisal for their work, bringing the total of journalists killed on duty to its highest in three years. The number of journalists killed in conflict fell to its lowest level since 2011. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser
In Mexico, ‘narcopolitics’ is a deadly mix for journalists covering crime and politics
It was 3 p.m. on January 13 when Carlos Domínguez Rodríguez stopped at a traffic light in Nuevo Laredo, in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Two men approached the car of the well-known newspaper columnist, opened the driver’s door, and stabbed him more than 20 times in front of his family.
Lawsuits and economic crisis drive Venezuela’s journalists into exile
When Ewald Scharfenberg, the founding editor of the Venezuelan investigative news website Armando.Info, holds editorial meetings, he pulls out his mobile phone. That’s because most of his reporters are in Venezuela while Scharfenberg lives and works in neighboring Colombia.
Venezuela’s biggest daily, El Nacional, latest casualty of newsprint restrictions
New York, December 17, 2018–Venezuela’s biggest independent daily, El Nacional, printed its last edition on December 14, its editor and owner Miguel Henrique Otero announced. In an interview published in the paper, Otero, who manages the paper from self-imposed exile in Madrid, said that El Nacional would be available online only because of restrictions that…
Nicaraguan police raid independent news organization, take equipment and documents
Bogotá, December 14, 2018–Nicaraguan police last night broke into one of the country’s few remaining independent news organizations and hauled away documents, computers, and TV cameras, according to news website Confidencial, which is one of the outlets affected, and other news reports.
CPJ calls on Brazil to end its use of criminal defamation to persecute journalists
New York, December 13, 2018–Brazilian authorities should cease prosecuting journalists for defamation and repeal the country’s outdated criminal defamation laws, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police took Paulo Cezar de Andrade Prado, a blogger known as “Paulinho,” into custody on November 9 to serve a prison sentence for criminal defamation, according to local…
Hundreds of journalists jailed globally becomes the new normal
For the third year in a row, 251 or more journalists are jailed around the world, suggesting the authoritarian approach to critical news coverage is more than a temporary spike. China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia imprisoned more journalists than last year, and Turkey remained the world’s worst jailer. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser