Communications in Madagascar include newspapers, radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, cinema, and the Internet.
Widespread poverty and illiteracy severely limit the penetration of television, print media, and the Internet, making radio by far the most important communications medium in the country.
[3] In November 2012 the de facto minister of communications stated that assertions harming the "general interest" were banned from public media.
Gendarmes interrogated the editor-in-chief of Le Courrier de Madagascar for several hours in April 2012 after he ran a story entitled, "Governance--the Brothel Takes Hold at High Levels."
In May 2012 police stopped a journalist from La Verite, a pro-regime newspaper, on his way to cover an event in Antananarivo.
The de facto minister of communications targeted those who expressed dissent, sending official warning letters to news outlets whose coverage displeased the regime.
[3] On 2 May 2012, authorities imprisoned the editors of the private radio station Free FM, Lalatiana Rakotondrazafy and Fidel Razara Pierre, for a two-day investigation following a libel suit brought by Mamy Ravatomanga, a well-known backer of the de facto regime.