Mexican

Powerful drug cartels and escalating violence made journalists in Mexico more vulnerable to attack than ever before. The dangerous climate was compounded by a pervasive culture of impunity. Most crimes against the press remained unsolved as Mexican law enforcement agencies, awash in corruption, did not aggressively investigate attacks. With no guarantee of safety, reporters increasingly…

The aftermath of the January 6 attack on the Televisa studios in Monterrey, a city that until recently was considered one of the safest in Latin America, has generated great interest locally in how the media is protecting itself. As part of the coverage, headlines in the Mexican media this morning said that journalists reporting for the…

Masked gunman threw a grenade at Mexican TV broadcaster Televisa on Wednesday and shot up the building. We released an alert yesterday condemning the attack and calling for the federalization of laws for crimes against the press in Mexico.

Yesterday’s attack on Mexican TV network Televisa is making headlines in the world press today. The Washington Post has coverage of masked gunman threw a grenade at the TV station, allegedly in retaliation for reporting on drug trafficking. The article quotes CPJ’s Carlos Lauria, who said that the “attack in Monterrey is another example of how…

New York, January 7, 2009–Tuesday’s attack on broadcaster Televisa in the Mexican city of Monterrey underlines the need for a federal law that protects freedom of expression, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Legislation that would make violent crimes against journalists a federal offense is pending in the Mexican Congress.

New York, December 18, 2008—For the sixth consecutive year, Iraq was the deadliest country in the world for the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in its end-of-year analysis. The 11 deaths recorded in Iraq in 2008, while a sharp drop from prior years, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ history.

Time.com’s “China Blog” has a post today titled “A Dark Time for Reporters in China” that outlines some recent cases of harassment and violence against journalists working in the country and quotes our statistics of journalists imprisoned for their work.

Dear President Correa: We are writing to express alarm at the imprisonment of two Ecuadoran journalists and to call for their immediate and unconditional release. Furthermore, we urge you to use the authority of your office to reform Ecuador’s archaic defamation laws, which are incompatible with international standards of freedom of expression and rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Last month, veteran crime reporter Armando Rodríguez was gunned down in Ciudad Juárez on the Texas border, sparking another round of hand-wringing about the relentless violence that is suffocating critical journalism in Mexico. Rodríguez’s brutal murder sparked coverage in the U.S. media as well, including pieces in The Washington Post and NPR.

Various news outlets had coverage over the weekend of press freedom in Russian in light of last week’s brutal assault on Mikhail Beketov, a Moscow newspaper editor who still remains comatose in a local hospital. The Chicago Tribune as well as the UK-based newspapers The Guardian and The Sunday Herald are running stories about the dangers…