Alexandra Ellerbeck/CPJ Americas Research Associate
Alexandra Ellerbeck, CPJ's North America program coordinator, previously worked at Freedom House and was a Fulbright teaching fellow at the State University of Pará in Brazil. She has lived in Chile, Bolivia and Brazil.
Are intelligence sector reforms enough to protect Colombia’s journalists?
When Colombia’s national intelligence agency, known as DAS, was disbanded in October 2011 after revelations of illegal surveillance and harassment of the press and public figures, many journalists breathed a sigh of relief. But recent claims of reporters being spied on and government agencies buying advanced surveillance technology without ensuring clear guidelines over its use,…
Claims police spied on two journalists revive surveillance fears of Colombia’s press
When Claudia Morales’s six-year-old daughter asks about her mother’s bodyguards, the Colombian journalist tells her they are colleagues. “She’s too young to understand,” Morales, who works for the Bogotá-based Caracol Radio in the city of Armenia, told CPJ in a telephone interview. Vicky Dávila, the news director of LA Fm Radio who also has private…
How U.S. copyright law is being used to take down Correa’s critics in Ecuador
On December 30, César Ricaurte, the executive director of Fundamedios, received a copyright complaint with the potential to close his entire website. The complaint, filed on behalf of Ecuador’s communications regulator SECOM by a company called Ares Rights, ordered the independent press freedom group to remove an image of President Rafael Correa from its website,…
Inter-American Human Rights System, campaigns against defamation laws keep journalists from jail in Americas
When a prison guard told Ángel Santiesteban Prats that he would be released from jail on a scorching summer day in July, the Cuban independent writer and blogger decided to ignore him, brushing off the news as a cruel joke. By then, Santiesteban had already spent two years and five months in prison, half of…