-- Why do people laugh when I tell them I'm taking a journalism ethics course?--, I ask Flor when I see her smiling face.

-- Because I think you don't need it--, says Flor Ortega, a Panamanian journalist and ethics university professor.

I feel honored to hear Flor saying I don't need a journalism ethics course. She has been a university professor for a number of years and she has also been a founding member of the National Council of Journalism's Ethics Committee.

However, I think I need to keep studying journalism ethics.

The Panamanian newspapers have taken serious steps to enhance their online presence opening YouTube channels, blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts and creating crowdsourcing tools to get photos, videos and information produced by their readers.

Journalists in Panama are using online technology to link colleagues from Panama city, Washington, D.C., an the provinces to discuss ongoing challenges to freedom of expression.

Dozens of reports are being sent to Mi Panama Transparente, the online crowdsourcing platform to track incidents of crime and corruption in Panama.

PANAMA, PANAMA -- The individual and his family were getting into a truck, ready to leave the Sumit park. Everything seemed to be normal except for the fact that the truck was marked with the legend ANAM (National Authority of Environment) in a Sunday afternoon, when no official vehicle are supposed to be on the streets for personal purposes.

As a part of the ICFJ's program in Panama, we are training correspondents who frequently work under risk covering not only community issues but also crime in cities affected by drug trafficking. Ethics, professionalism and methods of verification and bullet-proofing stories are crucial elements in the workshops.

Panama -- For a brief moment, I felt like being in a Mexico province, not in Colon, at the Caribbean port of entry of the Panama Canal.

PANAMA -- Journalists working from the Panama provinces are not quite fortunate in regard to training: they live and work to far away from the country's capital and don’t have the same opportunities to take seminars and workshops usually available for their colleagues in Panama City.

Reporters and editors working in the provinces are usually non-staffers, working as free-lancer correspondents for the main newspaper, national TV and radio companies; Unless they are willing to travel to Panama on their own to attend the workshops, they rarely receive training.

In some instances the m