Organizations defending press freedom recorded more than 40 cases of attacks on media outlets and journalists during presidential elections in Venezuela. Most were cases of intimidation and obstruction of journalistic work in voting centers. At least three journalists were detained while reporting.
Battling disinformation and using collaboration as a weapon, Venezuelan journalists are preparing for the next presidential elections to be held on Sunday, July 28.
GIJN spoke to reporters from outlets based in Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico, as well as from two region-wide projects, to hear how they carried out their recent work, where they are innovating on this beat, and how they are changing the narrative about organized crime from a focus on kingpins to investigations into the impact of organized crime on ordinary people.
The phenomenon of exiled journalists is not new, according to the UN Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan. However, the increase in recent years has caused concern and hence the need for both States and civil society to come together to offer help. Organizations from Latin America join that call.
In Venezuela, digital information freedoms are systematically censored and attacked, according to “Algorithms of Silence,” the 2023 Digital Rights Report from IPYS Venezuela. During the past year, 46 informative sites were blocked and 12 media outlets and four journalists suffered from identity impersonation.
Venezuelan journalists and photojournalists do other jobs outside of journalism to have extra income that allows them to survive. In 20 years of the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, 400 media outlets have closed.
Attacks on the press are undoubtedly one of the main challenges for media and journalists in Latin America. Talking about the state of digital journalism in the region also implies knowing the obstacles to press freedom. Journalists from Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela spoke about these challenges during the 17th Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism.
With their campaigns against independent media, the governments of several Latin American countries are beginning to threaten press freedom. Can Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega's extreme of media blockages and closures be replicated?
Independent Venezuelan media outlets Efecto Cocuyo and Crónica Uno gave life to Mirador Electoral, a journalistic project that seeks to be a space for discussion on politics and elections before citizens vote on the next president. The initiative is made of TikTok videos, interviews on YouTube and a series of articles.
According to recent research from Ecuador, journalism in Latin America is a profession with invisible psychosocial risk factors, a situation that was aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The main researcher and four journalists explain how to face this reality in daily work.
After an investigation, three Venezuelan journalists realized the best way to help journalism in Venezuela's Amazon region would be through a network that promotes collaboration and produces coverage that is conscious of both the environment and human rights.
The fact-checking coalition C-Informa of Venezuela won the Journalistic Excellence Award of the Inter American Press Association, in its category of data journalism, for revealing the social media disinformation strategy of Nicolás Maduro's regime. Learn more about the winning work in this article.