After years spent covering the war in Iraq for the Washington Post, American journalist Jackie Spinner decided she wanted to improve journalism in the country. So last year, she formed a newspaper in Kurdistan -- a region, she points out, without a Bill of Rights or laws to protect press freedom.

Press freedom in Latin America is under attack, according to four reports analyzing issues ranging from existing laws on access to information to harassment and violence against the press and the deaths of journalists in 2009. Read more below:

Independent media in the junta-run Union of Myanmar, the Southeast Asian nation know formerly as Burma, is nearly a misnomer. News rarely reaches the outside world from the closed country, where journalists are subject to arrest, harassment and violence by authorities.

The Kazakh public is actively discussing a slew of controversial amendments that, if passed, would drastically alter the Internet landscape in Kazakhstan. Among them is an amendment that would result in many Web sites being considered mass media, thus subjecting the sites to being blocked if deemed in violation of Kazakh law.