Bolivia / Americas

  

In five Latin American countries, COVID-19 responses restrict press freedom, CPJ, TrustLaw find

In Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, and Peru, emergency measures in response to COVID-19 restricted the media’s capacity to report freely and the public’s ability to access information, including critical information about public health interventions and the pandemic itself, a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Thomson Reuters Foundation’s TrustLaw program found. The report,…

Read More ›

Bolivian journalist Amalia Pando is seen in her makeshift office; she was formerly a ubiquitous presence on Bolivian radio and TV. (CPJ/John Otis)

Forced out of jobs and sidelined, Bolivia’s independent journalists see their audience slipping away

Amalia Pando was once a ubiquitous presence on Bolivian radio and TV, hosting some of the country’s most popular news and political commentary programs. At age 66, she’s still at it, but her audience is a sliver of what it once was.

Read More ›

A volunteer works to put out a forest fire in Quitunuquina, on the outskirts of Robore, Bolivia, on August 24, 2019. Bolivia’s forest fires have exposed the numerous risks faced by environmental reporters. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Bolivia’s forest fires expose risks for environmental reporters

When Pablo Ortiz, a veteran reporter for El Deber, the main daily in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, set off to cover massive forest fires, he didn’t realize how dangerous the assignment would be.

Read More ›

Vice President Álvaro García Linera, left, and President Evo Morales, right, at a gas plant in Bolivia earlier this month. The pair were voted in for a third term on October 12. (AFP/Aizar Raldes)

How Bolivia’s vice president used media to control his image–and that of the government

Álvaro García Linera’s savvy use of the media helped him make the leap from Marxist guerrilla to vice president of Bolivia. But critics contend that as the country’s second-highest elected official, García Linera is now using his substantial power to manipulate and control the Bolivian news media.

Read More ›

Bolivia’s president and state-run TV skip presidential election debate

President Evo Morales wasn’t the only no show at Bolivia’s lone presidential debate in the run-up to this Sunday’s election. State-run Bolivia TV, which has provided live coverage of every presidential debate since the late 1980s, also ignored the September 28 candidate forum.

Read More ›

Journalist investigates Bolivia’s ‘silent campaign’ for editorial control

At a bizarre news conference in April, Bolivia’s Communications Minister Amanda Dávila claimed that journalist Raúl Peñaranda, who was born in Chile, represented a dangerous “beachhead” for Chilean interests trying to deny landlocked Bolivia access to the Pacific.

Read More ›

Bolivian government gangs up on Página Siete

Bolivia’s loss of territory along the Pacific coast during a 19th-century war with Chile remains an extremely sensitive issue in the landlocked nation. Every March 23, patriotic “Day of the Sea” ceremonies mark the calamity, which Bolivia hopes to reverse through a lawsuit filed this year against Chile at the International Court of Justice.

Read More ›

Foreign Minister of Ecuador Ricardo Patiño speaks about human rights during the Organization of American States general assembly in Washington, D.C., on March 22. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

At OAS, a victory for human rights and free expression

By reaffirming the autonomy and independence of the regional human rights system and rejecting attempts to neutralize the work of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its special rapporteur for freedom of expression, the Organization of American States (OAS) chose last week to discard proposals that would have made citizens throughout the hemisphere…

Read More ›

CPJ

Free expression in Americas goes beyond left or right

On Sunday the general assembly of the Organization of American States will convene in Bolivia in the verdant, highland valley city of Cochabamba. The 35 member states (every nation in the region except Cuba) are expected to vote on a measure that, if passed, could curtail free expression and press throughout the hemisphere and put…

Read More ›

Latin America democracy violated by killings

Lately, we have come to expect violence against journalists in certain regions, such as the Middle East. But here at CPJ, 2011 has also been troubling for the number of journalists killed in an entirely different part of the world, the Americas. 

Read More ›