The National Assembly has expanded the powers of the Venezuelan Executive by granting the president decree powers and the authority to further regulate telecommunications, The Associated Press and Reuters report.
Starting Dec. 14, Venezuela’s National Assembly will begin to work on reforming the Social Responsibility on Radio and Television Law to include internet services and digital media, El Impulso and Europa Press report.
At least a fifth of Globovisión - a channel that is critical of President Hugo Chávez’s administration - is now the hands of the government after Venezuela took over a financial company with a significant stake in the network, Bloomberg reports.
The Appellate Court of Carabobo state annulled journalist Francisco “Pancho” Pérez's conviction that had sentenced him to three years and nine months of house arrest and a ban on practicing journalism during his sentence, El Carabobeño reports.
The national telecom regulator, Conatel, has urged that the law governing TV and radio broadcasts be modified to include Internet content, El Universal and El Tiempo report.
Columnist and satirist Laureano Márquez won the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for his independent commentary while under constant harassment from the government of President Hugo Chávez.
The Venezuelan government issued a decree prohibiting the unauthorized use of the “name, image, or figure” of President Hugo Chávez for public works, political and social organizations, or ad campaigns, EFE and AFP report.
President Hugo Chávez said it is not acceptable for the TV station Globovisión to criticize his government, while its majority shareholder, Guillermo Zuloaga, remains a fugitive of Venezuelan justice, The Associated Press reports.
Carlos Fuentes, an independent journalist and social communications student, was briefly detained by the police for photographing a group of people on the stairs at a Caracas Metro station, which he planned to post on Twitter, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) and Noticias 24 report.
Claiming that "narco-novelas" hurt the social and psychological well-being of children and adolescents, Venezuela's Nacional Telecommunications Commission (Conatel) has forbidden television stations from airing two telenovelas, or soap operas, whose main protagonists are drug dealers, reported El Universal and BBC Mundo.
Luz del Carmen Sosa Carrizosa and Sandra Rodríguez of the newspaper Diario de Juárez won the "Reporteros del Mundo" prize awarded by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in recognition of their “extraordinary valor” in covering drug trafficking and the killing of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
Laureano Márquez will be one of the journalists to receive an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) in November for having “risked their freedom and security to report the truth as they see it in their countries.”