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.”
The chain Radio France Internationale (RFI) came out in defense of its correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela, journalist Andreína Flores, whom President Hugo Chavez during a press conference accused of being ignorant and wanting to manipulate information, reported El Universal.
Just days before the Venezuelan parliamentary elections, representatives from the opposition Democratic Unity Coalition filed a complaint with the National Electoral Board (CNE) alleging that President Hugo Chavez was abusing the media by using them to campaign for candidates supportive of Chavez's party, reported El Universal.