Violence constitutes the majority of threats to the media in Latin America, according to a study, The State of Freedom of Expression in the Americas, by the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information based in Argentina. Judicial penal actions are still a major concern, the report says, while defamation cases have declined. These are several of the 17 categories the report classifies and analyzes using ten years of data from annual reports by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at the Organization of American States. While ranking countries based on media freedom inevitably presents challenges, including uneven reporting among countries and changing internal factors over time, the report reinforces the work of development organizations and civil society groups monitoring freedom of expression in the Americas.
Thu, March 18th, 2010