military coup". In a December 6, 2009 report from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, Freeston provided evidence that the election was more theatre than democratic practice. In particular, he exposed that the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal's own internal figures on voter turnout were not 65% as election winner Pepe Lobo and Western media reported, but actually 49%. His conclusion was that no one could know for sure how many Hondurans voted, given that the election was run by the same military that overthrew the elected president five months earlier, and that all international election monitoring groups (including the UN, Organization of American States, Carter Center, and EU) refused to observe the election. On December 22, 2009, Freeston was featured on Honduras' Radio Globo alongside ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and American University Anthropologist Adrienne Pine, where he spoke about electoral fraud. Canadian mining in El Salvador In 2008, Freeston reported from El Salvador on Canadian mining company Pacific Rim's attempt to open an industrial gold mine in the Central American country. He documented how the company hired 'promoters' in communities opposed to mining, a move that led to violence in a phenomenon the Salvadoran social movement began to call "social contamination". His video reports for The Real News document the popular resistance to mining and the $100 million lawsuit Pacific Rim launched against the government of El Salvador itself for alleged losses when, after months of exploration, it was denied a mining permit. In a November 15, 2009 story for The Real News, Freeston interviewed Tom Shrake, the CEO and President of Pacific Rim about the lawsuit. Shrake claimed Pacific Rim followed El Salvador's mining, investment, and environmental laws and was therefore denied a mining permit illegally. Freeston's investigation from San Isidro revealed contamination of the country's little-accessible water during the exploration stage, the inflammation of conflict by company promoters, the perception that the 2% tax Pacific Rim would pay on its revenues, and other social and environmental concerns were behind the resistance to the proposed mining project. He also reported on cases of murder and torture of anti-mining activists, such as that of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera. The Rivera family maintains that Rivera was killed for his opposition to the mining project and the local leadership that supports it. FMLN victory in 2009 Salvadoran elections In 2009, Freeston covered the El Salvadoran elections from the country's capital, San Salvador. He