Reporters from different news media gathered on Sunday Mar. 23 at Plaza Madariaga in Caracas to protest the repression against press workers at the hands of the National Guard.
The director of the Caracas newspaper, Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, asked the Attorney General’s office last week to open an investigation against Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, his attorney Ytala Hernández Torres and Yurbis Sayago Ramos, notary third of Chacao, for allegedly forging public documents, embezzlement and favoring public officers.
The Venezuelan TV network Globovisión put an end this week to their partnership with Colombian conglomerate RCN Televisión. The reasons behind the rupture were not specified but in the last two months the differences between the editorial lines of both media groups have grown.
A group of Colombian media organizations plans to send newsprint to Venezuelan newspapers, which are facing a shortage of the valuable resource and possible shutdowns, said the president of the Venezuelan daily El Nacional, Miguel Henrique Otero, according to the publication El Universal.
During the second edition of his new radio and TV show “En Contacto con Maduro, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro proposed a conference of Twitter users from Latin America and the Caribbean in Caracas, state TV network Venezolana de Television (VTV) reported.
Members of the Venezuelan news chain Cadena Capriles protested against the censorship of Laura Weffer’s investigative piece on the demonstrations that have taken place for over a month in the country.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro launched a weekly radio program titled “En contacto con Maduro” (“In contact with Maduro” in English) on Tuesday, March 11, reported the digital newspaper Infobae.
On February 12th, violent protests in Caracas led to the deaths of three people. Eyewitnesses sent video footage and photographs to the newspaper Ultimas Noticias, which then published them online. The footage shows both security forces in uniform and people dressed in civilian clothing opening fire on protesters, quite a different account than the one presented by official media.
The mass protests in Venezuela have led to 65 violations to freedom of expression, according to the Press and Society Institute (IPYS). As part of those violations, the organization published that, since the protests began on Feb. 12, 69 journalists have been affected by the situation. Among the violations are cases of aggressive and arbitrary arrests by police forces and attacks by protesters and government sympathizers.
Journalists covering the mass protests in Venezuela should consider wearing bulletproof vests, said Frank Smyth, senior advisor for journalism security for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), in a recent blog post.
The National Union for Press Workers in Venezuela (SNTP in Spanish) accused the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) of detaining 41 persons, of whom at least two were foreign journalists who say they were beaten and robbed of their equipment during a protest on Friday, Feb. 28.
The United States State Department published on Thursday their annual report on human rights, where it strongly criticized the restrictions on press freedoms and freedom of expression in Venezuela and Ecuador. In the midst of a political crisis in Venezuela, the report highlighted that the Venezuelan government “continued taking actions to impede on freedom of expression and restrict press freedoms.”