By: (AP) Attacks by Mexican drug gangs and government harassment in several countries are having a chilling effect on the news media in Latin America, a hemisphere-wide media group said Monday.
"Although the news media continue to carry out their public-service missions robustly in other countries, individual newspapers and journalists have faced a variety of direct and indirect efforts by governments, politicians, and powerful interests to constrain them," the Inter American Press Association said.
The IAPA, in its midyear report on press freedom in the hemisphere, denounced hostility toward news media by Argentina and Venezuela and the jailing of 25 journalists in Cuba.
The IAPA said it was concerned with gang attacks, including a recent incident in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, that seriously wounded a reporter, that have forced some newspapers to avoid any reference to drug activities.
Three journalists working in Latin America have been killed in the past six months and a fourth is missing and presumed dead, the IAPA said.
The report also criticized Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government for "harassing and punishing the independent news media."
"A so-called law of social responsibility for radio and television," the IAPA said, characterizes dissent as tantamount to criminal conduct.
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