IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie last week wrote a letter to Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina, urging the president to speed up reforms to the country’s press law after a second journalist was sentenced to prison for defamation in the country this year. That journalist, Melton Pineda, is currently planning to appeal a three-month […]

An $80,000 fine levied against an Ecuadorean magazine accused of spreading political propaganda constitutes a direct attack on freedom of expression, the International Press Institute (IPI) said today. Ecuador’s Electoral Arbitration Tribunal (TCE, according to its Spanish acronym) ruled last week that a May 4, 2011 editorial published by Vistazo magazine urging voters to reject […]

One step forward, two big steps backward in the fight against criminal defamation in Latin America: while a judge in Paraguay acquitted a journalist on defamation charges on Friday, reporters in the Dominican Republic and Cuba continued to face prison terms for libel. In Asunción, ABC Color columnist Alberto Candia had been the target of […]

Turkish President Abdullah Gül spoke out against censorship yesterday, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defended barring some media outlets from covering their Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s convention in Ankara last Sunday. Gül said in remarks opening the legislative year at Turkey’s parliament: “When writers, thinkers and intellectuals share their opinions without fear, such […]