Venezuela

Venezuelan authorities took a Colombian news station off the air on Wednesday after the station aired coverage of anti-government protests that have left three people dead and dozens injured, according to the station and news reports. Claudia Gurisatti, director of the 24-hour cable news station NTN24, said that the station found out on Wednesday afternoon that CONATEL, Venezuela's...

Local newspaper columnist and politician Wilfred Ojeda Peralta was found murdered in La Victoria, in the northern state of Aragua, on May 17 after disappearing the day before. Local press reports quoted relatives as saying they were not aware of his having any enemies. So far there are no clues as to the motive but the method suggests that it was a contract killing carried out at the behest of...

Carabobo Stereo 102.3 FM, a radio station based in the northern state of Carabobo, has been off the air since the evening of March 18 when around 30 representatives of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) turned up unannounced with soldiers, shut it down and seized its equipment, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Claiming to be carrying...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been given a press freedom award during a visit to Argentina. The University of La Plata said it was honouring him for his efforts to break "media monopolies" in Latin America and support "popular communication". Since becoming president in 1999 Chavez has set up the Telesur network, which offers a state-funded alternative to private television stations across...

The owner and editor of the weekly Notillanos Plus, Vladimir Hidalgo, has said that since March 14 the distribution and sale of his newspaper has been prohibited within the municipality of San Fernando, in the southwestern Venezuelan state of Apure. Hidalgo said he did not receive any official notification of the measure, but rather found out via a notice published on March 14 in the regional...

Gustavo Azócar, a journalist based in the western Venezuelan state of Táchira who has been prosecuted with varying degrees of success in the past, appeared on February 7 before a Táchira court again on a charge of libelling an army officer in 2004, when one of his jobs was correspondent for the national daily El Universal. A new hearing has been set for March 15, according to Paris-based press...

Nilo Jiménez, secretary for Reporteros Gráficos of the Venezuelan National Press Workers Union (abbreviated to SNTP in Spanish), has reported that he received death threats via several anonymous calls. In these calls, he was urged to stop gathering images of attacks against press freedom for an upcoming union publication, on the occasion of the institution's 65th anniversary. According to the...

An amendment to the Radio and TV Social Responsibility Law (Ley Resorte) – submitted to parliament on 9 December and due to be adopted this week at the Venezuelan president’s insistence – will increase the severity of the penalties for offending broadcast media and make them applicable to online media as well. President Hugo Chávez has asked the outgoing parliament, which he controls, to rush...

The State of Carabobo's Court of Appeals (in north-central Venezuela) has annulled the ruling that sentenced journalist Francisco "Pancho" Pérez to three years and nine months in prison, disqualified him professionally and politically for the same period of time, and ordered him to pay 1,250 Tax Units (approx. US$18,900). Pérez began practicing journalism again for the newspaper El Carabobeño on...

The Venezuelan government has acquired a 20 per cent stake in Globovisión, the only over-the-air TV channel that is still very critical of President Hugo Chávez after RCTV was stripped of its licence in 2007. RCTV was subsequently suspended from broadcasting by cable as well, and its latest attempt to return to cable broadcasting was blocked on November 25. The state took over on tuesday the...