News media in the Americas faces attack

Tuesday March 21st 2006, 10:37 am
Filed under: Newspapers

Attacks by Mexican drug gangs and government harassment in several countries are having a chilling effect on the news media in Latin America, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), a hemisphere-wide media group said Monday. The IAPA, in its midyear report on press freedom in the hemisphere, denounced hostility toward news media by Argentina and Venezuela and the jailing of 25 journalists in Cuba. The IAPA said it was concerned with gang attacks, including a recent incident in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, that seriously wounded a reporter, that have forced some newspapers to avoid any reference to drug activities. Three journalists working in Latin America have been killed in the past six months and a fourth is missing and presumed dead, the IAPA said. The report also criticised Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government for ‘harassing and punishing the independent news media.’ ‘A so-called law of social responsibility for radio and television,’ the IAPA said, characterises dissent as tantamount to criminal conduct. (AP, ABC News,March 21, 2006)

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