Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called on the country's courts and authorities to consider “special measures” that would grant him the ability to sanction print, television and radio news media after accusing them of waging "a psychological war” over Venezuela's current food shortage.
Maduro said the media's coverage of the crisis is negatively affecting the country's food security and economic interests, newspaper Diario Crítico de Venezuela said.
Maduro added that the private media's headlines are pushing Venezuelans to make "nervous" purchases and accused them of provoking the food shortage in the country's markets and supermarkets. He described the news coverage as “war propaganda” and said that, even though there's freedom of the press and expression in the country, it cannot be used against the people.
Maduro denied that there is a food shortage in the country, a stance that was echoed by Vice President Jorge Arreaza, who said that "there's nothing missing in Venezuela (...) not chicken or meet or oil or sugar or coffee or margarine or toilet paper," he said, according to Infobae.
However, there are other indications that Venezuela's food shortage has been intensifying in the last few months. According to the country's Central Bank, this year Venezuela obtained a score of 20% in its shortage index, a percentage that, according to economists, is similar to those of countries going through war, British newspaper The Guard reported.
"Other than oil, we produce close to nothing, and even oil production has decreased. There is a lack of hard currency, and, in a country that imports everything, this becomes more evident with food scarcity," Asdrubal Oliveros, a Venezuelan economist and director of non-profit Ecoanalítica, told The Guardian.
Citing an anonymous source, newspaper El Nacional published last week a story saying that Maduro sought out, unsuccessfully, to obtain económic help from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
