President Chávez has opened a Twitter account and published his first messages on the popular social network, following an earlier promise to use the Internet as his "trench" from which to provide information and respond to his enemies. See these stories.
President Chávez has opened a Twitter account and published his first messages on the popular social network, following an earlier promise to use the Internet as his "trench" from which to provide information and respond to his enemies. See these stories.
Prosecutors have charged two people in the kidnapping of Luis Gerardo Núñez, a reporter for the Globovisión TV network who was rescued in Caracas Friday night by police after a ransom was paid, Globovisión and El Carabobeño report. He was abducted for at least 48 hours.
Venezuela's new minister of communication and information, Tania Díaz, swore in the first 75 "communication guerrillas," members of school youth groups formed to “democratize” information and counterattack “the power of private media." See stories (in Spanish) by El Universal and El Nacional.
The president's ongoing battle against what he calls the "oligarchic media" has added a new front. The radio program "Suddenly with Chávez" (De Repente con Chávez) began broadcasting Feb. 8, and as its name suggests, it can go on the air at any moment, the Guardian and Times of London report.
El Nacional published a front-page image that shows a soldier holding the chain and hooks before a group of students who were protesting the closure of the RCTV cable station. The newspaper also reports that prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation against it over the image published Jan. 28.
Adding to a litany of recent attacks on press freedom, the Ministry of Communications and Information plans to ask prosecutors to punish Tal Cual for an editorial describing a Venezuela without President Hugo Chávez, ABC.es reports.
Don’t expect relations between Hugo Chávez and the U.S. media to improve in 2010. Venezuela’s government long ago declared war on “media terrorism,” its term for news organizations that criticize Chávez from within and outside the country. Chávez recently slammed the U.S. magazine Newsweek for its predictions that in 2010 Chávez faces another coup and that his mentor Fidel Castro will die this year in Cuba.
To face the many challenges that currently exist in Venezuela, many journalistic media have found themselves in need of forming alliances to continue reporting and investigating.
“With their colleagues, they continue covering the political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela exposing corruption, human rights violations, and environmental crimes, among others,” the Cabot jury said.
In these guayoyos between allied organizations and media outlets, as well as Venezuelan migrants, the goal is to get closer to the massive story of the Venezuelan exodus that has reached multiple countries on the continent.
After five months of imprisonment, Ana Belén Tovar, editor of the media outlet Entorno Inteligente and operations manager of Venmedios, was released after being detained since last November during a raid on the facilities.