Instituto Prensa y Sociedad

(IPYS/IFEX) – As was expected, Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) television station stopped broadcasting at 11:59 p.m. (local time) on 27 May 2007, after its frequency concession was not renewed by the government. The government’s decision provoked strong reactions among both the public and other opposition media, in the days preceding and after RCTV’s final broadcast. […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 22 May 2007, journalist Rocío Vásquez Goicochea, editor of the Chombote-based weekly newspaper “Investigando”, was given a one-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay 3000 soles (approx. US$900) as civil reparation to businessman Samuel Dyer Ampudia by Lima’s Fifth Criminal Court, for the crime of aggravated slander. Vásquez, however, has filed an […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 24 May 2007, a non-commissioned officer of the National Police, who did not identify himself, threatened to kill América Televisión television station journalist José Atauje as he was walking past the police station in the town of Huamanga, Ayacucho region, southern Peru. The policeman also threatened to kill Rocío Paredes, a reporter […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 23 May 2007, journalist Alejandro Jaimes Maguiña and cameraman Enoc Gómez Durand, of television station TV Perú’s Huaraz branch, were assaulted by a group of teachers belonging to Huaraz’s Education Workers’ Union (Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Educación, SUTE), who were staging a protest march against the central government. The teachers […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – In testimony given between 16 and 18 May 2007, paramilitary chief Juan Francisco Prada Márquez confessed that on 2004 he ordered the murder of journalist Martín Larrota Duarte because Larrota Duarte had opposed the paramilitary umbrella group known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The paramilitary chief was then the head of the […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 22 May 2007, the mayor of the district of Cajaruro, Antero Dueñas Dávila, hit cameraman Luis Cumpa Quiroga, a correspondent for América Televisión, in the face, after the mayor’s sentencing for the crime of usurpation of functions. Cumpa Quiroga was videotaping the mayor as he left the court when the mayor struck […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 19 May 2007, journalist Nelson Álvarez Narváez, a columnist with the newspaper “El Siglo de Maracay”, was murdered during a birthday party at his mother’s house. A hit man burst into the house and shot him six times. The murderer then fled in a car, accompanied by another man. The crime took […]

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 7 May 2007, journalist Sandra Hernández Acosta, head of Public Relations for the Municipality of Maicao, was assaulted by the vice-president of the Municipal Council of that same municipality, Sayira García Ariza. The assailant burst into the premises of radio Olímpica Estéreo as Hernández was broadcasting the institutional programme “Gestión con Resultados”. […]