Censorship in Venezuela

[10] During the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the censorship of the press, alongside acts of repression such as torturing and killing opponents, were used to maintain his authoritarian government.

[26] In August 2009, Diosdado Cabello, then director of the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL), ordered the intervention of 32 radio and 2 television stations, decision that received the name of Radiocide.

[29] Since 22 January 2019, Conatel has repeatedly advised against the promotion of violence and the disavowing of institutional authorities, according to the Law on Social Responsibility on Radio and Television imposed in 2004.

[38] On February 12, 2017, CNN en Español was taken off air by CONATEL following a news report accusing the Venezuelan government of selling passports and visas to persons from Middle Eastern countries with dubious backgrounds for profits through its embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

CONATEL accuses these channels of "collaborated with the dissemination of a message that incited the assassination of the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros."

[29] Canal 24 Horas, a news channel owned by Chile's public broadcaster, Televisión Nacional, was removed from Venezuela's cable and satellite television operators by the state-run National Commission of Telecommunications (Conatel) on 24 January, during the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis.

[47] In a country where all government branches act in compliance with the interests of the ruling party, ensuring a hegemonic media landscape, the Venezuelan people widely use the internet to participate in forums that allow independent expression, particularly social networks.

[63] The law was received with criticism from the opposition on the grounds that it is a violation of freedom of speech protections stipulated in the Venezuelan constitution, and that it encourages censorship and self-censorship.

[65] According to Spanish newspaper El País, CONATEL verifies that ISPs do not allow their subscribers to access content which is "an aggression to the Venezuelan people" and "causes unstabilization", in their criteria.

[68] It is disallowed for websites to publish the black market currency exchange rate,[65] as the government claims that this contributes to severe economic problems the country is currently reported to be facing.

In 2013, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro banned several internet websites, including DolarToday, to prevent its citizens accessing the country's exchange rates.

"As Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian government has overseen Venezuela's collapse into unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis since 2014, it has tried to restrict citizens’ access to information.

[85] Alfredo Romero, executive director of the Foro Penal, stated that the arrests of Twitter users in Venezuela was a measure to instill fear among those using social media that were critical against the government.

[87][88] The outage followed the sharing of a tweet made by opposition leader Juan Guaidó linking to a highly critical recording posted to SoundCloud consistent with the pattern of brief, targeted filtering of other social platforms during the presidential crisis.

[91] The government said Zello was blocked due to "terrorist acts" and made statements on TeleSUR about radical opposition after monitoring staged messages from "Internet trolls" that used a Honeypot trap against authorities.

[93][94] On October 17, 2022, Óscar Costero, a renowned Wikipedian, visited the main office of the Administrative Service of Identification, Migration, and Immigration (SAIME) in Caracas due to online complications renewing his passport.

[95][96] These incidents are believed to stem from a targeted campaign that began after the 2019 blackout, intensifying against Costero, De Viana, and Wikimedia Venezuela by the year's end.

The Costero and De Viana case illustrates the precarious state of freedom of expression in certain regions, spotlighting the challenges faced by those contributing to free and objective information dissemination.

[14] Editor Victor Manuel Gonzalez of the small region newspaper El Espectador de Guayana was arrested in 1987 and sentenced to three years in prison after he reported on corruption.

[99] In another incident, a photojournalist from La Patilla was assaulted by National Police who tried to take his camera and hit him in the head with the butt of a shotgun while he covering protests in Las Mercedes.

Assaults have taken place in broad daylight, and pro-government gangs have stolen media equipment.The CPJ offered advice on how to avoid aggression, how to react to tear gas and how to contact the organization to report any attacks on journalists.

[113][114] On 18 May, four journalists were attacked by the National Guard and had their equipment stolen, including Eugenio García of Spain, Herminia Rodríguez of Globovisión, Andry Rincón of VIVOPlay and Kevin Villamizar of El Nacional.

[122] Jorge Ramos, who The Guardian described as "arguably the best-known journalist in the Spanish-speaking world", was detained along with his Univisión crew members during an interview with Maduro on 25 February.

[126] Gazeta Wyborcza Polish journalist, Tomas Surdel, was briefly detained, threatened, and beaten, by FAES forces during the blackout, according to the Venezuelan press workers union.

[127] German journalist Billy Six, who was detained in El Helicoide since 17 November 2018 charged of espionage, rebellion and security violations, was allowed to leave Venezuela on 16 March.

In May 2007, controversies on press freedom were further exacerbated when RCTV (Radio Caracas Television)'s terrestrial broadcast licence expired, with the government declining to renew it.

President Hugo Chávez said on 28 December 2006 that he would oppose renewal of the group's broadcast license, accusing the channel of having supported the 11 April 2002 coup attempt in which he was briefly removed from office.

[citation needed] In 2019, after a campaign in media outlets and social media by progovernment movements, the pro-government Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela, through a Caracas court, ordered the ban of the screening of the documentary Chavismo: The Plague of the 21st Century, directed by Gustavo Tovar-Arroyo, at the Simón Bolívar University (USB) specifically, as well as at public universities and other public spaces in general, in response to the request of a prosecutor investigating it as an alleged hate crime or as inciting hate crimes, established in the Law against Hatred approved by the Constituent Assembly.

[137] In September 2014, the President of the State Bar Association of Medical Doctors in Aragua, Ángel Sarmiento, pronounced on the radio eight people dead of the same unknown disease in a hospital in Maracay.

[150] Instead of encouraging a diverse landscape of opinion and opposition, anything published that is not aligned with government ideals is denounced and discredited, so politicians rely on social media.