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Press Freedoms Under Siege in Venezuela

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has clashed so frequently with the press that it is impossible to feel any confidence that the May 28 elections will receive free and balanced coverage. Consider these recent developments:

• At a May 2 political rally to kick off the electoral campaign, Chávez supporters were so rough with the reporters present that they made it almost impossible for independent media to cover the event.

• On May 4, the Carter Foundation’s preliminary evaluation of the electoral climate reported “unequal access to the media” for the different candidates and “pressure on certain media outlets and journalists.”

• On May 5, politicians and journalists marched in support of freedom of expression and to denounce the government’s persecution of opposition journalists and attempts to stifle press freedoms. That same day the Bloque de Prensa Venezolano, a journalists’ association, submitted a formal complaint to the National Television Commission to protest President Chávez’s hostile remarks against the media.

• After the television program “24 Horas” was abruptly taken off the air, opposition presidential candidate Francisco Arias Calderón accused Chávez of targeting the program and “attacking the media because he is afraid of losing the elections.”

Even before these events, the Inter-American Press Association’s March 13 report on freedom of the press in the Americas found serious violations in Venezuela. The report catalogued Chávez’s verbal attacks against newspapers (including El Universal, which published an interview critical of the government with the Bishop of Coro, Roberto Luckert) and government pressure on the media to fire selected journalists (including Teodoro Petkoff, whose paper, Diario El Mundo, was openly opposed to the Chávez administration). The report also cited censorship (the removal of Roger Vivas’s talk show from Radio Universitaria) and judicial attacks against journalists (the defamation case brought against Revista Exceso editor Ben Ami Fihman).

This scenario does not bode well for freedom of the press in Venezuela. These events and others like them have serious implications for the future of free expression and democracy under the Chávez administration. The fairness of the electoral process itself is threatened as access to information becomes a tool of privilege and discrimination, curtailing the political freedom of citizens. The accusations against the Chávez administration paint a picture of state use of force to restrict the press and the public’s ability to choose among free and informed media. The result is less pluralism, less transparency and less democracy.