Media Censorship in Venezuela

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Media censorship destroys the necessary objective journalism of a country and disturbs the freedom of expression of all citizens as well as the democracy of the country. There are many countries in the world whose governments impose such censorship in order to prevent any information contrary to their thoughts to go on air. The question is, how far a government would come to silence so many mouths? Venezuela should be a democratic country with freedom of expression as its constitution states, the government should not violate the law by censoring the media to announce news that all citizens and the rest of the world need to know regarding to what is it happening in Venezuela everyday.
It is commonly known that all citizens of every country should have rights to express what they feel or think, in the case of Venezuela, according to Brewer-Carías, writer of “Dismantling democracy in Venezuela,” Venezuelan constitution states that everyone has the right to express freely his or her thoughts, ideas or opinion orally or in writing, and no censorship shall be established (2010, 152). Therefore, the fact that the Venezuelan ex-president Hugo Chavez blatantly closed several radio and television stations is an act of violation to the constitution of the country. In addition, it is not only the fact that many stations were closed, but also that the journalists were punished with years in jail if information contrary the government’s beliefs was published or said in public.
According to “The Americas: Switched off; Venezuela’s media crackdown” (2009), Venezuela’s attorney general Luisa Ortega states that anyone expressing himself in the media may face persecution, she also believes and articulates that the free speech must be regulated (32...

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...was jailed because of his anti-government stances (2009, 32). Indeed several important organizations whose goal is to ensure humans rights all over the world and governments from other countries have already Venezuela in their sights due to this phenomenon of blatant media censorship.

Works Cited

Brewer, A. R. (2010). Dismantling democracy in Venezuela. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cazalis, B. (2011). Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and the media: An analysis through cultural studies theory. Journal of multidisciplinary research, 3(1), 97-111.Retrieved from ProQuest.
The Americas: Switched off; Venezuela’s media crackdown. (2009). The Economist, 392(8643), 21-34. Retrieved from ProQuest.
Werman, M. (2013, April 10). Venezuela’s globovision on the block. Retrieved February 22, 2014, from http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-04-10/venezuelas-globovisionblock.

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