Portugal needs to urgently update its defamation laws to meet international standards and the demands of modern democratic society, a report released today by the International Press Institute (IPI) concludes. Defamation and insult remain criminal offences in Portugal punishable by up to two years behind bars despite the fact that a number of international human rights […]

Following a three-day mission to Suriname as part of a six-country mission to the Caribbean, the International Press Institute (IPI) said today it looks forward to working with the Surinamese government on a legislative package that would decriminalise libel and insult as well as institute self-regulatory mechanisms to oversee media standards in the country. In […]

It was the kind of small-town political scandal that would scarcely raise an eyebrow in cities with bigger fish to fry. But when Jornal do Centro, a weekly newspaper in the central Portuguese town of Viseu, suggested in 2002 that a local courthouse’s donation of used furniture to charity was marred by favouritism, it apparently […]

Lea en español The International Press Institute (IPI) condemned an alleged attack by a police officer on a photojournalist covering a general strike in Lisbon yesterday. Reuters released an image it said showed a police officer striking Agence France-Presse (AFP) photojournalist Patricia Melo as she covered the strike called by Portugal’s biggest trade union confederation […]