The web of repression in Venezuela extends to all media

[GatoGordo]

https://transparencia.org.ve/reportaje-principal/
translated from Spanish

Financial censorship ends with Venezuelan print media
By Maruja Dagnino
With the collaboration of Pedro Pablo Peñaloza, Yonaide Sánchez, Briceida Morales, Daniel Pabón,
Ronny Rodríguez, Humberto Torres, Jesús Urbina Serjant and Alba Ysabel Perdomo

Many smiled - perhaps understandably - when on Friday, October 5, 2018, the Communist Party of Venezuela, akin to the ruling party, announced that its newspaper Tribuna Popular was no longer circulating. This happened a day before celebrating its 3,000th edition, as a consequence of the precarious economic conditions of the country of Maduro, and the lack of paper. And of plates. And ink. As stated by the party leadership in a public statement that went viral.

In a text entitled "Nicolás, do you remember Tribuna Popular?", The journalist Vladimir Villegas recalls that at the high school José Ávalos, when he himself was a militant of the Communist Youth, an electoral agreement was reached with the leftist parties Bandera Roja, PRV and the Socialist League to present a unitary plate, whose president was Nicolás Maduro, although Juan Barreto seemed to have more popularity. And it was in the workshops of the Popular Tribune in San Martin that the posters for the electoral propaganda of Maduro himself were printed, under whose administration today the death is executed not only of the Popular Tribune but of the written press in general.

Villegas qualifies as an "irony" or "mischief of life" the fact that the septuagenario newspaper of the PCV has stopped circulating due to lack of paper in a country governed by who was then the beneficiary of Popular Tribune . Like it or not, it is a historical testimony of a plural and democratic country. All this happens in the context of a State's prerogative to distribute the newspaper through a company called Complejo Editorial Alfredo Maneiro, CEAM, presidid is attributed to Hugo Cabezas, a close Chavez, former governor of the state Trujillo man, former director of Saime and Minister of the Secretariat of the Presidency, portfolio left to take over the corporation. A company that receives all the preferential currencies for the paper import, in a country where it does not occur.

Forty-four print media stopped circulating in Venezuela definitively since 2013, and another 14 ceased their work temporarily. Of that number, 30 have left circulation this year 2018 and 10 of them announced total closure of operations. That is, they did not even entertain the possibility of migrating to the internet. These are the figures provided by the Press and Society Institute of Venezuela in its weekly balance sheet of October 8, when they closed Popular Tribune and The Luchador. Numbers that make it clear that the end of the press, after various siege patterns, corresponds to the collapse suffered by the entire Venezuelan business system, as a result of the same measures of persecution and political, ideological and, of course, economic control.

-snip-

A very interesting read. When the Chavistas control the newsprint, the ink, the distribution and WHO/WHAT/WHEN/HOW the news can be reported via farcical "union elections". The ONLY newspapers in print in Venezuela right now are those loyal to the regime. All others have folded or are in digital format (with skeleton crews). And you can set your watch by the radio stations that have their licenses suspended (or their electricity turned off) when anything is reported that is contrary to the interests of Chavismo.

Not a democracy, despite the protestations of the adoring acolytes of Castroism.