Posted on 05/04/2005 4:33:41 PM PDT by Wiz
03.05.05 | President Chávez' hold on power until 2006 was confirmed by referendum in August 2004. Before the vote, he stepped up efforts to intimidate the hostile privately-owned media and at the end of the year toughened laws against it. Press freedom was eroded a little further.
President Hugo Chávez won a referendum on 15 August 2004 on whether he should be removed from office. The campaign to get rid of him saw a new battle between the mostly opposition-controlled media and the president, who increased his harassment of it. Chávez declared himself the champion of the country's poor when he was elected in 1998 and has since hounded the "oligarchic" media at the slightest criticism of his rule, thus encouraging violence against journalists. A coup d'état briefly overthrew him in April 2002 and the major TV stations did not report the demonstrations calling for his return. An opposition-led general strike from December 2002 to February 2003 that tried in vain to force him out was broadly backed by the main privately-owned media. These stands by the media were used by Chávez as an excuse to chip away at press freedom, which deteriorated further in 2004.
(Excerpt) Read more at vcrisis.com ...
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