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Web of Repression to Close Newspapers
GUSTAVO HERNANDEZ I caracaschronicles.com
November 14, 2018
In 2018 alone, 30 media outlets have closed in Venezuela. 25 of them are newspapers.
With a new digital campaign aimed at decrying the dramatic number of fallen outlets in recent years (Caracas Chronicles has covered this troubling trend), there’s a new report from the Venezuelan chapter of NGO Transparency International, giving us a look on how the direct official pressure and our economic crisis have caused a huge drop in the amount of media voices available in the country.
Under the title of “Economic suffocation: the new form of power censorship,” Transparencia Venezuela tells us the story of eight different outlets with the very same fate: pushed into extinction by a communicational hegemony.
For example, there’s my hometown newspaper, El Impulso, forced to stop printing since February, going just digital ever since. Even though the lack of newsprint was the main cause of its ordeal, other factors, like reduction in advertising revenues, play a role. El Impulso, mind you, refuses to give in, with its staff reduced to a minimum.
You can see the same pattern in the remaining cases: from Versión Final in Zulia, to La Verdad in Monagas and Tal Cual in Caracas, founded by the late Teodoro Petkoff. Leer más
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