The owners of censorship in Venezuela/ Presentation

During the course of an entire year, a team of Venezuelan journalists in various regions and from

diverse media focused on learning the stories behind the chain of events in the change of property of the

media in Venezuela and reveal the names of the new owners, on which only rumors or silence were

available.

The research paper entitled “The owners of censorship in Venezuela”, spearheaded by the

Instituto Prensa y Sociedad de Venezuela in alliance with Armando.info and Poderopedia, presents a

series of articles and reports revealing opacity in the sale-purchase processes of the majority of the

media. It shows how the sales were forced through a series of pressure mechanisms exerted on the

media as a result of their editorial lines, as well as legal proceedings filed and the shutting off of sources

of information. After the change in ownership, modifications to the editorial lines became evident as

well as efforts to silence critical journalists. One constant was the slashing of investigation and research

units in printed media and television media. Another commonality was the resignation and firing of

many journalists from their workplace after having been subjected to censorship as a result of the

changes to the editorial line.

Public personalities which cannot be mentioned in the media; sources which may not be

consulted, threats to journalists for covering news on certain sensitive topics, as well as more space

given to events linked to regional or national powers, are some of the constant events revealed through

the testimonies of journalists from all different regions, who endured the changes in ownership in the

Venezuelan media.

The journalistic investigation encompassed data journalism and classic reporting techniques. A

group of journalists was created in several regions in Venezuela to inquire about the new owners of the

media in the nation and the subsequent transformations as a result thereof. For this purpose, as part of

the documentary research, the journalists visited mercantile registry offices in numerous states to glean

details about the purchase-sales. They also contacted journalists who had worked and continue to work

in the media, as well as the previous and new owners, most of whom preferred to remain silent.

The task included the drafting of a database with the information obtained at the mercantile

registry offices, the records of the threats and assaults against journalists tallied by the Instituto Prensa

y Sociedad de Venezuela, the study on censorship and self-censorship by the aforementioned

organization, as well as legal sentences available online. As part of the research, international databases

were also reviewed to have more in-depth knowledge of cases in which ownership of the media has

been diluted in other nations.

In the end, this never-before-seen experience in Venezuela involved at least 30 journalists from

various media and different regions, working jointly in this project. All in all, the history of change of

ownership of at least 25 media were revised, encompassing printed media, radio and television media in

nine of the nation´s states: Amazonas, Anzoátegui, Barinas, Bolívar, Carabobo, the capital district,

Mérida, Monagas and Zulia states. A series of interviews were conducted per case, collecting first-hand

testimonials on what has taken place in the various media. These stories are part of this special issue.

The Provincial Radio Out of Gas

Closure, forced sale or consent: the owners of independent radio stations in the inland areas of

the country have known for a long a time that those are the options left. After the compulsory closure of

32 radio stations (25 outside Caracas) in August 2009, Conatel has continued shutting down radio-signals

drop by drop to give their frequencies to friends of the Government or to harmless programming. The

spaces for news and opinion disappear as the companies of this sector are still in a legal limbo that

makes them unstable.

“The letter of Conatel, in which the end of the transmission was demanded, was received by a

technician at 6 am on Saturday August 1st, 2009. It could have brought you to tears... We never thought

it would be like this” recalls the president of the radio stations chain Circuito Nacional Belford (CNB),

Nelson Belfort, while walking through the hallways and radio studios of what was the headquarters of

102.3 FM, one of the most popular stations in the capital region, located in the La Carlota area, eastern

part of Caracas.

A space that was designed exclusively for the functioning of that station is now reduced to a

couple of old furniture, typewriters, no longer working TVs and a console that has fallen into disuse. The

awards they once won are still hanging on its walls, also the billboards they used and a paper that says:

“We are so afraid that ...will keep informing!”

In July 2009, the then Minister of Public Works and Housing (Mopvi, for its acronym in Spanish)

and director of the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel, for its acronym in Spanish),

Diosdado Cabello -now President of the National Assembly and First Vice President of the ruling United

Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) - under the slogan of “democratizing the radioelectric spectrum,”

opened an administrative procedure to recover the concessions of 86 AM stations, 154 FM stations and

45 television stations (10 VHF and 35 UHF).

On August 1st, 2009, the threats of closure materialized for only 32 radio stations and two

television stations located in different parts of the country. Seven of these stations transmitted in the

Capital District and five of them were part, in different areas of the country, of the CNB circuit: 102.3FM

Caracas, 101.1FM Valencia, 94.5FM Táchira, 96.1FM Punto Fijo and 102.1 FM Maracaibo.

The radial circuit that created the program Aló Ciudadano, originally hosted by Leopoldo Castillo

and then retransmitted on a television format on Globovisión was the big loser of the day. “We were a

group of ten radio stations nationwide. Without the matrix station and other major stations, the circuit

was very compromised, and as a direct result, 240 employees lost their jobs, not counting the indirect

talents who depended on us,” said Belfort.

Selective closures after the massacre

More than five years after that raid, there is no case in which the constitutional protections and

the precautionary measures submitted to the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) had been carried out in

order to request protection of the right to work. The denounces made by Belfort before international

bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had not impact either.

Today, the old dial of CNB Caracas is occupied by the radio of the National Assembly, which took

over the frequency just one week after the closing of commercial station. Four other stations belong

now to the state- owned YVKE (Mérida 106.3FM, Nueva Esparta 92.9FM, CNB Táchira and CNB Zulia

102.1FM). And Sucre 103.3 FM is the channel aimed at a young audience of the station Radio Nacional

de Venezuela (RNV), also state-owned.

Two of the unoccupied frequencies, both in Amazonas state (1130AM y 107.5FM, have yet not

been taken over, not even by community radio stations.

Other dials were taken over by commercial stations. Such are the cases of Bolívar 96.9F, now

Radio Nikra; Carabobo 100.1FM, currently radio Wama; and 105.1FM Zulia, which is now known as la

Radio del Pop.

Vargas 106.9 FM was taken over by a Christian radio, and Carabobo 98.3FM is known as Extrema

“the most popular station of Libertador”, according to its motto. However, the latter does not appear in

the official directory of community radio stations provided by Conatel.

Because of being in the name of Nelson Belfort and not his father's, the only dial that remains as

CNB is 95.3 FM, in Mérida. The stations belonging to CNB that were not closed are still on air but under

different names. The opinion programs decreased and Belfort confesses that they have extreme careful

in complying with the law of content: “We have to avoid problems with the regulatory entity, so they

won't have any excuse to say ' you put a comma incorrectly' and shut me down because of a

technicality”.

There was no further knowledge about the list of the names of the remaining 251 media that in

July 2009 appeared to be punishable. There also has not been another day comparable to August 1st,

which became known to the public as the Radioassassination day. Since then, Conatel has been closing

radio stations quietly and gradually in the inland areas of the country.

Play it Safe or the Price of Self-censorship

Already in January 2012 the newspaper El Universal of Caracas published that, during the

previous year, Conatel had proceeded to close 27 radio stations nationwide.

One of the companies mentioned back then was Cosmopolitan 107.9 FM, in Carabobo state. It

was said that it went off the air due to the implementation of administrative procedures by Conatel.

However, the institution denied the allegations and explained, through its then Chief Operating Officer,

Enrique Quintana, that it was just about a simple inspection “ like hundreds of these that are carried out

every three months because of denounces made by interested parties who operate the radio

spectrum”.

Now Cosmopolitan does not longer exist. Its frequency belongs to the station Frenesí. Its owner,

Ezequiel Aranguren, assures that when they began to have administrative problems with Conatel in

2011, he decided to put an end the relationship with the partners of Cosmopolitan and create‒using the

same frequency‒this new media. But far from only having changed its name and its partners, it also

changed its editorial line: Cosmopolitan‒now Frenesí‒ went from having a clear opposing posture to full

political asepsis.

Mareline Sánchez, who works in Frenesí, confessed that although her program Punto en Boca

reads out the different headlines and daily news, it avoids talking about political issues.

During 2011, in the same state, Conatel also temporarily closed the station Carabobo Stereo

102.3 FM on the ground that it was acting clandestinely. Under the same argument, in November of

that year, staff members of the institution and members of the National Guard seized the equipment of

nine stations, two in Falcón state, three in Zulia state and four in Monagas state.

The stations La Caicareña 100.5 FM and VIP 93.1 FM of Monagas state were taken off the air in

2012. Currently a commercial radio station and a Christian station respectively function in the same

frequencies. Opinion programs are scarce, as well as the other stations still operating in the state.

The commentator of XL 106.7FM, Silvia Sánchez, thinks that more than 95% of the stations of

Monagas state serve the interests of the national government or tend to self-censorship . On the radio

where she works, she is the host of the only opinion program. “There is freedom of opinion depending

on the owner of the stations and their interests,” Sanchez said. The host of El humor y el interés in Tu

Preferida 104.5FM, Antonio Marcano, also from Monagas state, agrees with Sanchez: “Self-censorship is

very strong. The owners of the radio stations do not want to incur the wrath of the government.”

According to Marcano, that's the only defense mechanism they have to survive.

Another station that has people talking in Monagas is Líder 100.7FM, taken off the air by

Conatel in March 2012, but it went back on the air a few days later, when the former mayor of Maturín,

José Vicente Maicavares, distanced himself from the then Governor José Gregorio Briceño, a dissident of

the PSUV that was expelled from the ruling party ranks.

The radio in Barinas state, the birthplace of the late President Chávez and political stronghold of

the ruling party, has also suffered. On May 2nd, 2012, independent producers of the station Sensacional

94.7 FM denounced that Conatel laid down some conditions to renew the concession that legally allows

the station to operate. The three years prior to this, journalists of the station had been denouncing that

they were receiving threats and intimidating messages for doing their job. Finally on August 19th, 2014,

the order was given to take it off the air.

In September 2013, four radio stations went off the air and their equipment was seized in the

southern part of the country, in Amazonas state: Voz del Orinoco 98.5 FM, Impacto 97.5 FM, La

Deportiva 99.9 FM and Shamanika 101.1 FM. Tourism Minister, Andrés Izarra, made a statement

regarding that to the media: “There is no fascist radio station in this state anymore. It's over. Conatel

continues to monitor, to supervise,” he said referring to the Voz del Orinoco.

The problems in Shamanika 101.1 FM began when Jackson Márquez, Deputy of the Legislative

Council of the state, made on his show some comments, in which he "finger pointed two generals of

garrisons, Jesús Zambrano and the general Pinto Gutiérrez. Zambrano called me twice and Pinto

Gutiérrez once,” said the director of that media outlet, Augusto España. Pinto Gutiérrez, former

commander of Regional Command No. 9 (Core 9) in Amazonas state, is listed between 2003 and 2006 as

a shareholder of the company Romana International Holdings Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands,

according to documents published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ),

where the names of people linked to companies in tax havens are listed.

Shamanika 101.1 FM was fined with 25,000 tax units for operating without a license and 60

were unemployed after the closure.

In the case of the Voz del Orinoco, about 30 employees were fired. Adriana González, mayor of

the municipality of Atures, was inside the station when Conatel ordered the closure. “It was a black day

for the freedom of expression. The radio was taken from 10:00 am until 8:00 pm and we were practically

kidnapped inside. Outside the station people of the PSUV gathered together. No one could enter or

leave the building” she recalled. The problems with the Voz del Orinoco emerged after the coverage that

this media did during the seizure of Hotel Amazonas, in July 2013, a resort that was taken from the

local‒opposition‒governance in order to assign it to the Ministry of Tourism.

Deprived of Independence

Of 12 radio stations in Amazonas state, the half is linked directly to the national government.

The rest are Christian or commercial music stations: Private stations still on the air decided to be more

careful with the opinions that are broadcast.

Simeón Rojas, director of Marawaka 103.1 FM, admitted to have toned down the programming

in the last few months: “We have always been careful of content, but after September we realized that

we should have more responsibility and pay more attention in the exercise of freedom of expression.

You cannot say whatever you want on the radio… Something wrongly said could bring consequences.”

The governor of Amazonas state, Liborio Guarulla, relocated the radio show Sábados con Liborio

from the Voz del Orinoco to Marawaka. “If you do not want them to close all stations and to not have

any window left to give information, you have to be smart in expressing your opinions. I'm undoubtedly

censoring myself. We are in a very repressive regime with a lot limitations” said Guarulla.

According to the report and accounts of the Ministry for Communication and Information

(Minci, for its acronym in Spanish), 938 authorized radio and television functioned in Venezuela for the

year 2011. 660 of them were private; 235 community-run; and 43 state-owned. That proportion has

been traditionally the ground for the government to say that the private sector, potentially opposition

of the revolutionary process, is still the majority in the radioelectric space.

However, the formula does not consider the changes and adjustments that many of those

private media have made in order to not irritate the authorities, not counting those stations that are

owned by open government advocates.

The figures also do not take into account the number of illegal stations still operating in the

country. The people interviewed agree that there is an increasing number of dials considered as illegal,

that there are many expired concessions and that the authorities do nothing about it: “Everyone in the

country is still operating with an expired concession. They do not close them because they do not find

the political momentum to do it. Although since President Chávez died, it seems that the trend is not to

close, but to buy. If you get tough, you'll close ... If you agree, I'll buy, "explains Belfort.

Dismissals and resignations at a media conglomerate

The sale of the nation´s principal editorial group, apparently to a British group of investors,

besides contravening Venezuelan laws on the ownership of media, truncated an unprecedented

journalistic innovation project. Now Últimas Noticias, the newspaper with the largest circulation, and its

sister publications in the former Cadena Capriles have been reduced to exercising precaution and

complacency with the powers-that-be.

The journalists showed their indignation with the analogy declared by the new chairman: a

newspaper is not an ice cream factory, they claimed during the general meeting held on March 6, 2014

in the editing room. David De Lima –a politician who is attached to the chavista political party, former

governor of Anzoátegui state, with no prior experience in media but designated on February 26 to head

the nation´s largest editorial company- insisted that the reporters should be grateful for his presence at

the meeting and his willingness to respond to all their doubts. All but one: who are the new owners of

Cadena Capriles, now called Grupo Últimas Noticias. “I am not authorized to disclose this (…) I am the

visible face now”.

He bragged, however, of being the most sincere media manager, capable of telling what nobody

would: that newspapers are communication instruments at the service of the interests of their owners

which have to “be in the blue”, referring to the revenues. No chairman discusses the management

process of a company with the employees. And nonetheless, there he was, in front of them to assure

them that the editorial line would not change and that nothing would be censored. “(…) so long as it is in

the constitution”, he rushed to warn. And he gave an example: he said that the guarimbas -in reference

to protests against the national government going on since February 12 nationwide- were

unconstitutional, and part of a coup.

Preoccupation could be read in the faces of the journalists of the three newspapers -Últimas

Noticias, El Mundo Economía y Negocios and Líder En Deportes- that comprised and still comprise the

communications conglomerate. They stated their fear of incurring in biased information in pro of the

government. “There are 43 pages”, responded De Lima several times to questions on the classification

and ranking of news. The president of the republic, Nicolás Maduro, and state-related actions deserved,

in his opinion, relevant treatment. A bomb at the national general meeting, on the other hand, deserved

a small space in the events section, he said. “Coup plans are not going to be in the front page”, he

sentenced.

That afternoon, after the general meeting, everybody continued working without knowing who

they work for now. They ask themselves this question since October 25, 2013 when the company

announced the concretion of the sale. Latam Media Holding, a company registered in Curacao (an island

in the Caribbean near to Venezuela, a former Dutch colony and a tax haven) one month prior –On

September 26- is the new official owner. The mercantile records of Grupo Últimas Noticias (the official

name of Cadena Capriles) confirm this, despite decree Nº 2095 –approved on February 13, 1992 to

regulate foreign investments- which sets forth that newspapers in the Spanish language are reserved to

domestic companies.

Latam Media Holding was created by TMF Group (Curacao chapter), a company consultancy firm

which, according to its digital web portal, operates in more than 75 countries and offers support to

companies wishing to expand through international investments. Its greatest offer of service is being

cognizant of local regulations and yet it represents a company that purchased a Venezuelan media

against the tenets in the Venezuelan legislation. A petition for information in this respect was delivered

at the Venezuelan headquarters of TMF, but so far there has been no response.

Latam, however, is but an intermediary –with capacity to acquire, sell, transfer, administrate

other companies- at the service of British group Hanson (Hanson Group, also called Hanson Asset

Management Ltd), with investments in various countries in Europe, Asia and America, as indicated in a

note published by Últimas Noticias. It was registered in London on March 23rd, 2010 and as of the first

quarter of 2013 only had six employees, according to DueDil database on companies in the United

Kingdom and Ireland. An interview was requested via email with any representative of Hanson Group

for this article, but no response was received.

New owners, new instructions

A tweet by Idania Chirinos, journalist of international TV channel NTN24, ‘tubed –a journalistic

jargon term referring to who offers the breaking news first‒the workers of Cadena Capriles. “(…) it

seems as if a banker bought it, whose initials are that of a TV channel”, she published in May 2013. She

referred to the owner and president of the Banco Occidental de Descuento (BOD), Víctor Vargas

Irausquín. The financial entity denied it three days later: “It is not in our interests nor is it permitted by

the banking law”, indicated the BOD´s Twitter account. This was not however what Vargas told some

journalists in October, when he met with various heads of departments of the media, in representation

of the new management. Miguel Ángel Capriles –former chairman of Cadena Capriles and spokesperson

of the former capital stock composition which included him and his six sisters – pointed, during the Q&

A at a chair occupied minutes earlier by Vargas. “I brokered the business agreement with the man who

was sitting there”, Capriles affirmed, according to the testimony of journalists who witnessed the scene,

including Omar Lugo, the first one to be fired.

The rumors were not far from the truth: the BOD was the principal financier in the purchase of

the editorial company. Seven months earlier, in fact, the British company had reported a net worth of 2

million 49 thousand 313.56 dollars, according to DueDil records, so Hanson would have bought a

Venezuelan company at a price exceeding 47 times its own patrimony: Grupo Últimas Noticias was sold

for 614 million 812 thousand 320 bolivars -97 million 589 thousand 159.55 dollars at the official

exchange rate-, according to its mercantile docket.

The document indicates that this bank, as the principal financial creditor, appointed two of the

members of the new board of directors. “Since the aforementioned credit balances were paid in full, the

general shareholders´ meeting shall be the entity in charge of designating all the company´s directors”,

the document states.

After the sale, the company´s directors were comprised thus: Carlos José Acosta López (who was

part of the former board and is also the president of H.L. Boulton S.A.C.A. C.A., which imports and

exports sundry products and equipment), Pedro Rendón Oropeza (attorney of the BOD), René

Brillembourg Capriles (nephew of the former owners, with ample trajectory in the financial sector),

Robert Hanson (chairman of Hanson Group), Christian Patrick Teroerde (director general of Hanson

Group), Juan Isidro Señor Boguña (member of the former board and vice-chairman of Spanish company

Innovation International Media Consulting Group, SL), Manuel Cristóbal Saucedo (owner of Spanish

company Saufive Sociedad Limitada), Diego Lepage (attorney of Víctor Vargas), Ricardo Castellanos

(executive president in the former board) and José Antonio Gil Yépez (director of Datanálisis survey

company).

The minutes of the meeting of Grupo Últimas Noticias registering the change in ownership also

shows the designation of Desireé Santos Amaral, congresswoman at the general national meeting of the

Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (Psuv), as the new editorial counselor. She directs a radio station

ascribed to the ministry of communications and information (Minci for its acronyms in Spanish), the first

government entity that showed signs of exerting pressure in mid-2013 through emails with editorial

suggestions. The director of Últimas Noticias, Eleazar Díaz Rangel, and the vice-president of media

content, Nathalie Alvaray, manifested their discontent. The emails ceased, but not government

inherence: Lugo was destituted from his post as director of El Mundo Economía y Negocios on

November 18, 2013, days after the national head of state criticized one of the newspaper´s front pages

during a TV broadcast. “When the interests of the government have the means to enter an editorial, it

means it has more presence than is normal, that it has veto capacity and that arises from stakeholding

capacity”, considers Lugo. The publication alluded to a reduction in the international reserves, based on

official data furnished by the Central Bank of Venezuela. Lugo, prior to his ousting received

recommendations –indirect from top management, he says- to protect some figures in the government.

“Take care of” a Nelson Merentes, chairman of the BCV, and abstain from mentioning that the brother

of the first lady, Cilia Flores, was the new treasurer of the nation, were some of the suggestions.

Nevertheless, new orders have been mostly aimed at Últimas Noticias, one of the newspapers

with highest circulation nationwide, at an average of 210 thousand prints a day, and recognized for its

high incidence in popular sectors. Hilda Carmona, former head of information, explained, for example,

pressures exerted by the presidents of the media regarding the front page. The headlines could not print

‘Maduro’ alone. We could only print ¨President Maduro¨, which involved a problem of space in a

tabloid. He had to be protected: “One day we wanted to publish a headline stating ‘Maduro asks for

help to rule’, as per the colloquial language we usually use in Últimas Noticias. They sent us to change it

because they said that that weakened the image of the president”, she explained. The former owners,

she affirms, never used to intervene in the decisions on the front pages of the newspapers. That was in

the hands of the directors and heads of information. The typesetting and hierarchization of the news

began to highlight the government´s versions over the others to such an extent that some reporters

opted for adapting as a mode of self-censorship. “They used to tell me: that this information they are

going to send me to put it on a lower part of the page. And I used to respond: but leave it higher up, you

are nobody to tell me to put it lower; if after arguing and putting up a good fight, they force you to put it

lower, we did the best we could”, Carmona recalled. What´s important, at least for the journalist, was to

try for all information to be published, although some were given more space than others due to

considerations that have nothing to do with good journalism. “But we were able to put out all the

news”, she stated.

Juan Carlos Figueroa, who used to be the reporter for the political news source, affirmed that

some notes on sectors of the Venezuelan opposition were suppressed as well as spokespersons of the

chavista political party who raised critiques on government decisions. Articles written by him and his

workmates were not given permission to be published by Díaz Rangel if they did not include the official

version which –despite being a traditional consideration by the director in pro of guaranteeing balanced

information- was accentuated after the sale, Figueroa explained.

Violent news were also minimized in the newspaper. The main headlines on the last page,

generally referring to news of the events section –the name given in Venezuela to police and court-

related news- varied their theme. The argument was to bet on a culture of peace and non- violence.

“Make the events news represent a failed government policy, well of course (…). But it is as important

that a taxi driver was killed as a private bodyguard”, stated Carmona, who quit, resigned, after a 15-year

career at the company. The new editorial line had encompassed the city news source: it began to be a

problem, for example, to publish several reports on the potholes in the streets. The rights of the female

reporters of this section were severely trampled –censored articles, the threat of lawsuits- since the

start of the management by the chairman Héctor Dávila, an elections machine technician for the Psuv,

appointed on May 20, 2014. He is the third one –after De Lima, who in turn had succeeded Carlos

Acosta- in occupying the chairman´s seat at Cadena Capriles after the sale (the two latter as

chairman/editor). One week after Dávila entered, Jován Pulgarín, director of Líder En Deportes, and Erys

Alvarado, general director general at large, were fired. Carmen Riera, director of graphic and audiovisual

journalism, resigned that same day in solidarity with her coworkers.

Pressures on the sports source began during the 2014 South American Beach Sports Games in

Playa Vargas. Pulgarín considers that the news coverage was in accordance to the dimensions of the

event. “It was a small championship (…) Not news to open every day with”, he explained. But

reprimands by the head of state once again had consequences. Maduro accused the media of making

the competition invisible in the front page, forcing Pulgarín to be sacked. The Súper Desk, a figure

grouping eight directors, was slowly dismantled.

Protests and resignations

Nathalie Alvaray, jointly with Miguel Ángel Capriles, spearheaded the integration of three

newspapers into one single editing room. A new headquarters of the company was inaugurated in La

Urbina in 2012, in the easternmost part of Caracas, after decades in its old site at Torre de La Prensa

(nowadays the headquarters of the Minci) as part of a transformation and innovation process. The

project at Cadena Capriles also included nine different business units. “Miguel Ángel wanted the

journalists to also be trained as managers and I very gladly had to learn about the business”, Alvaray

recounted. At the helm of the Vice-presidency of media, she also promoted the consolidation of the

Centralized Research Unit (UCI for its acronyms in Spanish) at the service of the various newspapers. The

defense of a video made by the UCI was in fact the motive of one of her last fights in the company: the

investigation team managed to make a graphic reconstruction of the violent events of February 12, 2014

after a student march against the national government. The report revealed that functionaries of the

National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin for its acronyms in Spanish) shot at protesters and were

responsible for the death of 23-year old Bassil Dacosta. “I was being pressured to take the video off the

web, but I refused”, she affirms. These orders ceased when president Maduro recognized on national

television the irregular behavior of the Sebin officials. The head of state changed his first version, in

which he had attributed the deaths of that day on acts of violence by the protesters themselves.

Alvaray ended her longstanding trajectory in the company one day after De Lima dissed the

previous management where she had been a key figure during the general meeting with the journalists.

“Journalism comes first”, she said, in bidding farewell to her colleagues. The phrase became the flagship

phrase of censorship complaints and was printed and put on top of the majority of the seats in the

editing room. It was a form of protest in light of the new changes. Another one consisted in publishing

unsigned articles for several weeks.

“One good topic to investigate is who financed the guarimbas (street barriers erected by citizens

with garbage)”, De Lima proposed in front of all and Díaz Rangel assigned the note to the UCI, headed by

Tamoa Calzadilla, who days later, was warned on the difficulty of proving the denunciations made by the

national government to this respect. The article then consisted in a chronicle about the two sides -

protesters and national guards- of the guarimbas, the popular name given to street barricades and

blockades set up by opposition protesters. The director demanded a series of conditions: “for me to

twist the investigation to say that they were groups financed by foreign entities. He instructed me to

condemn them, but I never understood in which terms he wanted me to do this. And not to call them

protesters but instead to use pejorative names against them”, Calzadilla enumerated. Faced with the

journalist´s refusal, Díaz Rangel declined to publish it and the censored article was leaked and amply

disseminated on the Internet. The head of the UCI resigned the following Monday and the other

members of the team slowly one by one also resigned as the months went by. Goodbyes became

increasingly more commonplace in that united editing room.

Dávila did not respond to interview petitions for this note. Neither did Díaz Rangel, the only

newspaper director who continues since the previous management, now involved in denunciations of

censorship. Editorial instructions, as the months go by, are increasingly more direct: Two of Dávila´s

bodyguards stood behind the shoulders of web coordinator Andrés Tovar, while he modified a digital

note at the request of the president, Rafael Mata, web reporter, recounted. Security officials also

attacked the journalist for the political source, Odell López, whom they tried to evict from the editing

room after the company´s management asked for his resignation, since they considered him to be

‘undesirable’ and he refused.

“I am annoyed that they call us useful idiots who were making one family wealthy. My question

is: who are we making wealthy now?" an angry reporter asked De Lima at the presentation meeting. His

quandary was not answered. Dávila has not answered either. One confidentiality clause endorses their

silence and leaves the workers of “the people´s newspaper” in a state of flux.

A steamroller trampled over ‘El Universal’

After 105 years of history, in July 2014 one of the beacons of the national press passed from its

family founding hands into those of some buyers concealed behind layers of front companies. Since then,

the ‘El Universal’ newspaper is bent on publishing one-sided news coverage, complacent with the

powers-that-be and distracted with dissidence, unabashedly called by its new authorities “flat

journalism”.

Opinion was the first casualty of the change. More than 30 columnists were fired, including

Néstor Luis Álvarez, who in August received an email informing him of a “temporary” suspension of his

services. He used to send in his articles to the newspaper since four years and became syndicated since

January 2014: Miguel Maita, in charge of the opinions section of the El Universal newspaper, gave him a

fixed space every Thursday. The only requisite, Álvarez recalled, was to send his columns every Tuesday

before 1 pm. No other condition, until the rules of the game changed with the new owners. According to

the official version, Spanish firm Epalisticia acquired El Universal in July of that year and the following

month, Álvarez –and other columnists such as Luis Izquiel, Unai Amenábar, Eddie Ramírez, Orlando

Ochoa, Axel Capriles, Miguel Ángel Santos, Adolfo Salgueiro, and others- were excluded from the

newspaper.

The first round of layoffs was issued by a consultancy council for the newspaper. Later on, the

measure was said to be framed within a “restructuring” process.

From: Miguel Maita <mmaita@eluniversal.com>

Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Re: MIGUEL MAITA EL UNIVERSAL

Good afternoon and greetings, I hope you are all right.

I am sorry to have to inform you that due to an editorial restructuring spearheaded by the El Universal

newspaper, a series of adjustments has been made and therefore we can no longer publish your articles

for the time being.

A thousand thanks and warm greetings,

Sincerely,

Miguel Maita.

Nevertheless, many of these collaborators denounced their ousting of the newspaper as a form

of censorship and broadcast the content of their final articles through their personal Twitter accounts. In

response, on August 5th, El Universal published an editorial making reference to a code of ethics “which

proscribes personal offenses, slander, false information, lies, disrespect and moral judgments”. The text,

entitled “To our readers”, indicated that the persons responsible for the new stage at El Universal had

warned about the violation of these precepts by some columnists. Álvarez denies having ever been

informed about the existence of this code and dismissed the note: “It seems as if it seeks to discredit

and to sow suspicion on the critical stance of the columnists”.

The following month, another expression of interpretation of real-life in Venezuela was

excluded from El Universal: the final cartoon by Rayma Suprani in the newspaper co-related the

signature of former President Hugo Chávez to the healthcare crisis suffered in the nation since his

mandate. The vice-president of information of the newspaper, Elides Rojas, informed the cartoonist of

her layoff. The motive: she was too awkward for the new directors led by Jesús Abreu Anselmi. “I am

proud that the healthcare topic was the bastion for my ousting of El Universal”, stated Rayma –which is

her real name and also her artist pseudonym- without lamenting.

This was not the first time that her creations made the president of the newspaper

uncomfortable. Prior to this, a cartoon on the meeting of President Nicolás Maduro with his Colombian

peer, Juan Manuel Santos, was censored. “I have yet to know exactly why, but it was not well taken. I

was told that it was because President Santos appeared with a pig´s face”, the female journalist recalled.

Abreu, however, met with her after the incident, said that what had ensued had been a

misunderstanding and assured her that she could continue working freely. At that meeting, Rayma

suggested that the chairman broadcast a style manual to clarify the new directives of the newspaper.

Abreu´s response, the cartoonist stated, was imprecise: he answered that there were no directives and

that things would be determined as the days went by.

The owners play hide-and-seek

The first article published by the newspaper announcing this new stage was published on July

5th, 2014. 105 years after its foundation, its owners had changed: Spanish company Epalisticia had been

incorporated into the capital stock and had displaced the Mata family, the heirs to the newspaper´s

founder.

The full name of the buyer is Epalisticia Private Equity and it is a risk capital firm created in

Madrid on July 24, 2013 with a capital stock barely skimming the minimum sum needs to register a

company: 3,500 euros (500 euros more than the amount as per the law). Its purpose is the “purchase,

sale, lease, division and urbanization de plots, tenements and farmland of any nature (…) Investment in

and administration of media, especially in emerging markets, for the purposes of developing new

digitalization models of national and international news”, as per a public database with information of

the official bulleting of mercantile registry offices (Borme) in Spain.

The chairman of Epalisticia is Eduardo López de la Osa Escribano, who has shares in three other

Spanish companies –Lovalcama SL, Centro de Investigaciones Ginecológicas SL and Bodegas Valsardo De

Peñalfiel-, as per data in the Borme. His profile on Linkedin expounds on his ample corporate trajectory

outside the Iberian Peninsula: he has been associated to Grupo CTO, Santander Private Banking Spa,

Daturi e Motta Banqueting Srl, and currently works at Neurored, a company with international scope

dedicated to the development of computer technology applications.

Other board members of the administration council at Epalisticia are also entrepreneurs with

varied businesses in Spain: José Luis Basanta has participated in five other companies at the Borme, José

Antonio López de la Osa Escribano in seven and María Teresa Atalaya Sevillano in twenty. Gallaecia

Invergest SL, a firm that offers economic and legal counseling to companies, also appears as member of

the administration council of the Spanish firm.

At the helm of the board of directors, nevertheless, is a Panamanian company with Venezuelan

owners: Tecnobreaks Inc. acquired the total capital stock of Epalisticia in May 2014. It was created on

July 6, 2011 by Carlos Odín Velazco Cuello and his father Carlos Velazco Mora, both from Cumaná, Sucre

state. the former denounced to several media the fraudulent use of his company to buy the newspaper.

He stated in his declarations that he found out through Twitter about the link between his company and

the purchase of El Universal, and said he would sue his attorney José Alejandro Quiodettis, who

seemingly used the name of his company for a fraudulent operation, without his authorization. “I wish I

had even $ 20,000, the least I would do is invest it in my country (sic)”, he said in a tweet. Through the

social network and an email he was sent a request for an interview a propos of this article but he has not

responded.

For this article, we also visited on three occasions the offices of Epalisticia in Spain asking for a

formal interview, but as of the publication date there has been no response. And in Venezuela, Abreu,

appointed the chairman of El Universal from the time the sale was officially announced, has not

responded either. His assistant, María Mercedes Estrada, stated, after two months waiting, that he has a

“busy schedule”.

On July 13, the newspaper published an interview in which Abreu explained his arrival at El

Universal: the Spanish entrepreneurs contacted him for his management skills to conduct the fate of

their new acquisition. Epalisticia, according to declarations by Abreu and Lasanta, was specifically used

to execute the sale as a mediator.

Abreu, unlike the Spanish businessmen, is not a known face in Venezuela. He is the brother of

‘maestro’ José Antonio Abreu, the founder of the system of youth and children´s orchestras of

Venezuela, of ample recognition locally and internationally. The new chairman of El Universal is a civil

engineer, consultant to private and public companies; he chairs Panamanian company Joyeuse Holdings

Inc. and represents Venezuelan company Tucan Petroleum Services de Venezuela, a State contractor.

His major credit, however, has to do with the 1994 financial crisis when the national government took

over the Banco Latino, resulting in the temporary closing down of 60% of the banking system. Abreu was

deemed a fugitive from justice on account of this case according to a report by the division of legal

proceedings of the ministry of justice published in 1998 by the newspaper which is now under his helm.

“Not only shall we be critical of the government, but of anything that needs to be criticized (…)

There shall be no controls or chases. Freedom of expression is an essential value”, he declared. He said

the same to the journalists of the newspaper when he introduced himself as the new chairman and said

he did not know of any link to the government with the sale of the newspaper. That meeting, journalist

Fernando Peñalver said, was brief –20 minutes- and there were not many questions. Maintaining the

staff and the work mode were some of the promises made. Nevertheless, there was no correspondence

between the new management´s proposal and later changes.

Lists and “Flat journalism”

Abreu met with each section of the newspaper separately. “He said he wanted a more balanced

newspaper (…) That there would be no changes in the editorial line and that he wanted a newspaper of

proposal because the nation was tired of diagnoses”, Víctor Salmerón, who worked in the economics

section, stated. That same day, at night, however, one of the first cases of censorship took place: Abreu

ordered to remove from the next day´s edition a note on the position of the unionists of the “Alfredo

Maneiro” Siderúrgica del Orinoco (Sidor for its acronyms in Spanish, the national steel mills) on the

signing of the collective bargaining contract.

Days later, another note on the same topic, collecting varied stances by the union leaders of the

state-owned company was substituted by an article by the Venezuelan News Agency (AVN), ascribed to

the ministry of communications and information. Faced with this, the journalists drafted a communiqué

published by the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP), rejecting this. ‘The union’ –comprising the

head editors Elides Rojas, Miguel San Martín and Taisa Medina- later informed that the chairman had

recognized that what had transpired had been a mistake.

Suggestions and pressures towards exercising journalism lacking in analysis and investigation by

the journalists progressively increased. “They are demanding flat journalism and only statements by

spokespersons without contributions by the reporters”, said Salmerón, who quit after 16 years working

in the newspaper.

Some government personalities, on the other hand, are exempt from the journalistic magnifying

glass at El Universal: a propos of the destitution of Miguel Rodríguez Torres, the minister of internal

affairs, justice and peace, last October, reporter Thábata Molina proposed an article giving a balance on

his performance but the proposal was rejected because the official –according to what her bosses

informed her- is part of a list of “untouchables” by the newspaper. Diosdado Cabello, president of the

national assembly, José David Cabello, superintendent of the Seniat (the State tax collection agency) and

Jorge Rodríguez, the mayor of Libertador municipality in Caracas- are also on that list according to editor

Elides Rojas, Molina affirmed. The editor also had informed her that there was no space for the leaders

of the Venezuelan opposition party Henrique Capriles Radonski and María Corina Machado in the

newspaper, “no matter what they did”, as per orders from the presidency.

The order: to conceal the violence

When Molina questioned the editors as to the future of the section dedicated to covering the

violence in the second most dangerous city in the world, Elides Rojas answered that the order was to

minimize these events. The first action in this regard was to slash the number of pages: the section

dedicated to Caracas had five pages, four for news related to the city and one for cases of violence, until

in the middle of the year the problems began on the import of paper to print newspapers on and the

entire section was narrowed down to one single page. “In the events section, we went from filling out

what was spilling over from the page related to Caracas, to short notes”, the reporter explained. She

decided to resign after receiving several guidelines to conduct journalism complacent with the powers-

that-be.

For example, after two months requesting an interview with minister Rodríguez Torres, Molina´s

petition was accepted, but the newspaper´s directors decided to send another reporter in her place.

“When I inquired as to what had happened, I was told that they did not want a journalist that was

uncomfortable and would ask questions that would put the minister on the spot”.

In another episode, a note on four persons murdered at a party in Gramoven –a popular

neighborhood on the western part of Caracas- during a weekend became a motive for dispute between

reporter Natalia Matamoros and the boss on call, who blocked the information from reaching the

coverage requested by the female journalist due to the magnitude of the case. “Some other time, four

dead persons would have been a headline on the front page”, Molina, who has nine years of experience

in the area, declared.

The possibility that public officials made claims against journalists for the coverage of news

topics is an open sore at the editing room of El Universal: a member of the Anti-extortion, Kidnappings

and Abductions Group (Gaes for its acronyms in Spanish) of the National Bolivarian Guard sought Molina

out at the newspaper´s headquarters to confront her on an inquiry she carried out on abductions in

Caracas. No-one, neither her bosses nor the editors -the female journalist stated- found that visit to be

odd. The power of the government within the newspaper is clear for everyone.

The Purge Lacked Coverage

Globovisión ‒a 24-hour news TV channel that used UHF signal‒ was for 15 years the black beast

of the revolutionary regime. But it got tamed after its purchase in May 2013. The following, and very

obvious, change of its editorial line made the most visible faces of the network feel uncomfortable and

caused them to walk away. The bleeding silently continued inside the network, until making sure that

there were no talents or messages “annoying to the Government.”

The file of Globovisión Tele C.A. is classified: the document that reflects their owners, shares

and capital has not been available to the public since the TV channel was sold in May 2013. “It's in

custody and its location is unknown” is the answer given in the First Mercantile Register of Caracas

when someone asks to see them. The data of registered companies in Venezuela‒filed in the different

commercial services of the country‒ are of public domain and have one requirement: to show the

identity card. But that does not work in the case of Globovisión: the guardian of the documents (those

under legal investigation) bombards the petitioner with questions: who he is, where he comes from,

what he wants it for, why this one and not another one. And then the opportunity of consulting the

documents is denied, “Come in 20 days and we'll see, but I don't guarantee anything.” Two weeks later,

the vagueness is the same: “It's still not possible (...) I would have to do detective work to find out

exactly who has it.” The negative responses continued in the subsequent visits. The lack of information

transparency is imposed: the details about the purchase of Globovisión cannot be certified.

Carlos Zuloaga, former owner of the TV channel traditionally recognized as opposition to the

national Government, had been announcing his decision to sell since early 2013. In March he explained

to his workers at a meeting that the transaction was going to be carried out after the presidential

elections of April 14th, in which the candidates Nicolás Maduro, sponsored by the ruling party, and

Henrique Capriles Radonski, representing the Venezuelan opposition competed against each other. The

electoral event was going to determine whether the revolutionary process continued or not after the

death of Commander Chávez, and the change of hands regarding the TV channel's ownership was

relevant because Globovisión would serve ‒as, in fact, it did‒ as single diffuser horn for Capriles'

campaign , actually banned in other media.

By then, Globovisión was threatened with ten legal procedures initiated against it by the

regulatory body. One of these procedures, if successful, would impose the TV channel a fine $ 2.1

million, which represented 7.5 % of their annual gross income. “Globovisión is not economically and

legally viable,” said Zuloaga, according to his employees.

So the lead of the TV network was, two months after the announcement, in the hands of well-

known personalities of the financial sector: Raúl Gorrín, Gustavo Perdomo and Juan Domingo Cordero,

owners of the insurance company Seguros La Vitalicia. That is what Leopoldo Castillo‒an independent

national producer and then host of the television show Aló Ciudadano, one of the symbols of the TV

channel's grid‒ said, in the presence of the new owners, to the channel's employees, state the

journalists consulted.

The promise of the new management–The same one formulated earlier by Zuloaga‒ was to

maintain the workforce and the essence of the editorial line, with a difference considered as benefit for

journalism: the opening of the official source, previously denied in retaliation for the critical position of

the TV channel. The proposal was to report with more balance, a characteristic of professional

journalism, which no one could refuse to.

Until then, the more than apparent links between the new management and the Government

were, precisely, one of the reporters' main concerns. For example, they showed interest in the

management's relations with retired military officer Alejandro Andrade, who worked as a bodyguard of

former President Hugo Chávez and as national treasurer and President of the Bank of Economic and

Social Development (Bandes, for its acronym in Spanish), and who faces allegations of administrative

irregularities with State resources. “Not only do I know him, but he is a close friend of mine,” responded

Gorrín, recall the journalists. A story on the deficiencies in the Bandes was in progress that week in the

research department. “Can it be published?” asked the reporters then. The answer: "Yes, if it holds

well." So remembers it Mary Trini Mena, former reporter for that network, who had just returned from

studying abroad for seven months to rejoin the Research Unit, which had just lost its boss: Lysber Sol

Ramos had been one of the first to resign after the announcement of the sale. Mena, however, stayed ...

until she was kicked out.

Be Careful of What You May Find

The program was called Caso de Investigación, it aired on Sundays and reran on Wednesdays.

The staff consisted of the head, a producer-editor and five reporters that generally had a one- to- two-

weeks period to work on in-depth reports on various topics. With the departure of Ramos Sol, the

department remained headless during its gradual extinction: the management of the network began

displacing several of its members to other functions, such as street reporting and news presentation.

Mena explains that, with seven years on the job, she was the veteran of the group. She hired a new

replacement staff to guarantee the program's continuity. She also took on management tasks while

waiting for the appointment of a new boss. However, the working conditions were changing: two

stories, one on the toilet paper shortage and another on the blackouts, did not have their respective

reruns on Wednesday. Mena and his team demanded an explanation. “We were sent to talk to different

people, to the production manager and others. We were told that the issues were outdated and did not

want to rerun them.”

Soon after, another obstacle added to her work as journalist: The stories would no longer be

broadcast without a contrasting version of the Government's spokespersons. No matter the way

government officials systematically boycotted team Mena, the decision translated in practice into a

freeze on work. “We wanted to do a story on the deaths at the check points, but the Minister of Interior

and Justice never answered our calls and so the program could not air,” she says.

Facing the regional elections of December 2014, the management brought to department

members a project of elections coverage to tour the country and abandon Caso de investigación . The

reason for the closure was explained, remember Mena, in a raw and direct way by the director of

Globovisión, Mayela León: “ To research brings trouble and the new owners do not want trouble ."

The last story of the program, which addressed the issue of the shortage of new vehicles on the

market, in charge of the journalist Reimy Chávez, led to the opening of the first procedure, since the

sale, of the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel, for its acronym in Spanish) against the

network. Both the producer and the publisher were fired and Mena was forced to take a month off.

Upon return, she was welcomed with a check for dismissal. “We don’t have anywhere to put you”, told

her the President of the network, Gustavo Perdomo. Her offers to carry out in-depth articles were

rejected. “The owners do not want that, they want one-dimensional news,” explained Leon.

Meanwhile, Reimy Chávez was confined to the role of TV anchor. From that position, he

presented to the production manager, Ulises Castro, a series of especial stories on topics of social

interest, such as the cement shortage, the lines to buy gas cylinders and the student demonstrations.

Neither was of them was materialized, due to a lack of agreement. Chávez did not agree with, amongst

other things, the superficial coverage of the news, so he used his new position to announce his

resignation live, in front of the cameras, on April 2nd 2014. “It wasn't a decision, but an impulse” he

accepts.

Security officials of Globovisión did not even let him write a formal letter of resignation. They

accepted his announcement on screen and removed him from the network's installations at the end of

that segment of the prime broadcast of the news.

Control in the regions

At first, says Giselle Almarza‒former correspondent for Globovisión in Anzoátegui state, in the

east of the country‒, everything went as predicted: after the network was sold to its new owners, she

could, unlike before, get an official version when she was covering a complaint. But that was just one of

many changes. The coordinator of correspondents, Gaudy Contreras, resigned after a director of

correspondents was designated above her position. She considered that an indirect dismissal, assures

Almarza.

The new management of regional coverage of the TV channel began to intervene more than

usual in the scripts of correspondents. “It was very obvious because they put a lot of words that we

didn't use, word that even people don't know: They wanted me to say 'negligible stipend' instead of 'low

wages'; You could not say 'peaceful demonstration' or 'shortage ', but ' difficulty in finding products'”

explains Almarza . The images of violence, prohibited by Conatel during daytime and evening hours, also

are conspicuous by their absence in the night-time transmissions since the sale emissions, she explains.

In February 2014, when protests in several cities that kept the Government of Nicolás Maduro in

check until May began, the new instructions intensified: was of them was not to address the issue of

shortage in order not to alarm or to destabilize the public. The Word “guarimba” joined the catalog of

forbidden terms.

The stories on the demonstrations were shorter ‒50 seconds‒ than those that correspondents

traditionally used to tape ‒between a minute and a minute and a half‒. And many of them did not come

out on screen. Almarza and his cameraman received complaints and offenses coming from by young

people and female demonstrators: “They come to tape but nothing is shown on TV”, they criticized. The

reporter decided to resign after the network did not support her allegations that she was receiving

personal threats from an armed pro-government group. The legal adviser Globovisión even persuaded

her not to go to the Attorney General's Office.

The stories made by Madelyn Palmar, a former correspondent of Globovisión in Zulia state (the

northwestern part of the country, near the border with Colombia), were‒like Almarza's‒modified

without previous notice. Palmar states that she would find out about it during the news' transmissions:

some testimonies and images were eliminated from their stories. “Strong news against the Government

were last in the news,” she adds. However, her departure from the network was decided with the

coverage of a protest in Palaima, a residential area of Maracaibo, the state capital. “We had images

where you could see the National Guard giving orders to an armed group to shoot buildings and burn

vehicles,” explains Palmar. That night, while the cameraman was trapped in the conflict zone, Palmar

was informed that the technical team of correspondents would be replaced the next day. She and other

correspondents, as Doricer Alvarado‒report of Lara, resigned in opposition to the measure.

Months before, the network had promised its technicians that they would be included on the

payroll.

The violent episode of Palaima had no mention in Globovisión. The materials sent by Palmar and

her colleagues were never transmitted. “You quitted and we don't owe you any explanations” the

network told them. The information was finally released by CNN in Spanish: the former correspondents

of Globovisión handed the video over to the journalist Fernando Del Rincón, who also convinced them

to speak in his program about on that case of censorship. “What happened in Zulia, from which many

people still have not yet recovered, never existed for Globovisión, nothing happened,” says Palmar with

indignation.

In the Back Room Too

Jesus Chúo Torrealba, by then an independent national producer, learned the morning of August

14th, 2013, through comments of the network's technicians, that his two shows, El radar de los barrios

and Del dicho al hecho, would be cancelled. He went surprised to the office of Juan Domingo Cordero,

then director of Globovisión‒later we would part ways from the company‒, looking for an explanation.

He informed Torrealba that a series of modifications would be made and his two, strongly critical of the

Government, spaces did not fit within the new programming concept. “I believe in free enterprise, you

bought this network and have the right to manage it as you want,” recalls Torrealba, current Executive

Secretary of the opposition's Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), to have answered

On that same day, Leopoldo Castillo transmitted the last episode of his program Aló Cuidadano

and, as a display of solidarity with his resignation, the journalists Román Lozinski , Sasha Ackerman and

Jorge Luis Pérez Valery refused to present the news. The management, in retaliation, denied them the

entry to the installations of the TV channel.

Those were some of the more evident cases of what was going on in the network, because it

was about well- known faces to the public that suddenly disappeared from the screen and they had no

open chance to say goodbye in front of the cameras.

A little more quietly, the producers of news and opinion programs dealt with the new guidelines

of the network's owners and they were not always successful.

José Olmos, former production coordinator‒in charge of the transmission of the newscasts‒

talks, for example, about the increase in minutes aimed at broadcasting the news of the ruling party to

detriment of the information related to the Venezuelan opposition or to the demonstrations due to

flaws in the public services. According to Olmos, the opposition's leader Henrique Capriles was vetoed

from live transmissions while the President of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello‒First Vice

President of the ruling party United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)‒, had to be highlighted in the

programming. “I was not happy with my direct supervisors. I always would get a negative answer; I

could not keep quiet though. I had to keep denouncing that no good journalism was being created,” he

says. The network's management rejected his complaints and was fired. “I was told that there were

other journalists who, like me, were on a list and that they would leave Globovisión if they did not 'get

on board.'”

Vanessa Ugueto and Serena Rangel, also producers, give similar testimonies. Both of them, just

like Olmos, were fired after issuing complaints about the changes. Rangel, producer of the morning

show Primera Página, was forced to cancel, on several times since and at the last moment, interviews

with opposition spokespeople to replace them with representatives of the ruling party. “The issue of

canceling the guests would not let me do my job (...) When I called the people that the bosses told me

to, I would notice that someone had already contacted them before,” says Rangel. She did not always

give into the orders: she refused, for example, to cancel an interview with opposition Deputy Ismael

García the night before the appointment. The management, through Carlos Ramirez‒one of the new

bosses‒, reprimanded the journalist for her complaints. “Here there are economic interests which we

have to defend and we have to act according those interests (...) I explained you that we must obey”.

Those are some of the words that Rangel Ramirez recalls. The next day, she was fired.

Ugueto claims that the news of the crime section was gradually reduced and was replaced when

other news emerged. The journalist would not hesitate‒she says‒to discuss her stories, when, for

example, they demanded to reduce minutes for opposition topics. She asked journalistic justifications.

She also claims that the narratives spoken on-site by the journalists on camera were eliminated or

edited, without prior notification, in the stories that were finally showed on air. “I would call them to tell

them and denounce all those censorship cases on my Twitter account,” states the producer. Her

publications began to be criticized by some of the bosses, according to comments overheard by Ugueto.

Days later, the legal adviser of the network, Sergio Arango, did not provide any arguments when he told

her she was fired. “I asked him to tell me why I was being fired and he said: I have nothing to say,” she

recalls.

Gabriel Bastidas, former community manager of Globovisión, says that since late 2013 began

censorship began to appear on the website. “They started ordering us to take down some stories

already posted on the page, like one on the appointment of a family member of Cilia Flores,” he says.

Like others, Bastidas would express his discomfort through his personal Twitter account.

Some rumors indicated that the management was unhappy with his publications and, shortly

after, he was fired due to “a process of restructuring.”

¿The director Mayela León, however, was more direct with the reporter, David De Matteis: She

informed him that the Minister of Communication and Information, Delcy Rodríguez‒ current Foreign

Minister‒, had called the network to “ask for her head” following a tweet that criticized President

Nicolás Maduro, which De Matteis spread during a press conference of the President. The journalist

recalls the words of León: “By order of the owners of the channel, you cannot stay here.” He requested

a meeting with President Gustavo Perdomo, for whom journalist had empathy since his entry to the

network. Perdomo, however, although cordially, was emphatic in his response: “If you're annoying for

the government, we cannot do anything.”

For several months an interview with León y Perdomo was requested via telephone and

personally in the headquarters of the network‒through the Management of Institutional Relations‒, but

there has been no response to date.

From the Eastern to the Western plains, the purchase of media favors the Government

A carrousel of purchase and sale transactions has been turning around the ownership of regional

information medias. There are cases such as that of ‘De frente’ newspaper in Barinas, and ‘El Sol’ and

‘Extra’ newspapers in Monagas. Those which get on board are usually supporters of the local and

national government, whereas those which are closing down were vocal dissidents of the powers-that-be

or had fallen in disgrace.

The De Frente newspaper of Barinas (the capital city of the state with the same name, to the

south-west of Venezuela), had more than publishing news throughout its history. In the memory of its

employees there is also and above all a file chock-full of insults and offenses: a period of political

persecution against its journalists, the violation of their rights as workers, the violent change in its

editorial line and, characteristically, a constant transfer of ownership, most of which are linked to the

national government.

It is not that De Frente is the most influential newspaper in a state whose population doesn´t

even reach 900,000 inhabitants, or a vigorous agricultural, farming and commercial activity; it was

placed in the Venezuelan political and information map for being the birthplace of commander Hugo

Chávez and the private enclosure of his family clan, a point of honor for the national government. For a

while it became, in the words of opposition congressman Rafael Simón Jiménez, the only plural window

which “could pull the mask off of the Chávez family”.

Since 1998 the Chávez family –Hugo de los Reyes, the patriarch, and Adán, the older brother-

have taken turns at the head of the local government of the state, and other brothers and family

members of the revolutionary leader have divided up the mayor´s offices and other public

administration positions among themselves. There was never a good time to question the management

of the presidential family, but least of all during the election campaign of 2008. At the time, Adán

Chávez launched his candidacy to be the governor after ten years of his father in that post. The clout of

the Chávez surname, although it seemed to guarantee victory at the ballots, truncated the ambitions of

several local leaders of the official political party who had viewed themselves as the natural candidates

to the regional government. Among them was the mayor of the city of Barinas, Julio César Reyes who, in

a bind, opted for postulating himself as an independent candidate. Overnight, the phantom of division

threatened with making the Chavista party lose an emblematic position. It was a risk which could not be

taken. The problem thus posed, the solution Adán Coromoto Chávez found was to make use of the

regional media.

De Frente newspaper was founded on August 20, 1990 according to docket number 5509 at the

first mercantile registry office of Barinas state. Its pages certify that José Daniel de Jesús Trejo and José

Luis Carrasco constituted a company entitled Inversora 435, the editor of De Frente newspaper with a

capital stock of 7 million bolivars; each share was worth 10 thousand bolivars. Trejo held 560 shares y

Carrasco 140. Nine days later the capital stock was increased to 8 million 200 thousand bolivars. Two

years later, in 1992, Jesús Trejo sold his shares to the Manfredi Campochiaro brothers: Luigi, Sabatino

and Giancarlo. Immediately afterwards, Luigi sold 140 shares to María Eugenia Cedillo Vaz. That same

day, Carrasco sold his shares to Luis Velázquez Alvaray, a former Chavista magistrate who fell in disgrace

a few years later, and who now from his exile in Costa Rica, accuses his former co-workers at the

political party, ideals and workplace of being corrupt and has even called them criminals. In September

2000 Velázquez Alvaray and María Cedillo sold all their shares to the Manfredi brothers and these

increased the capital stock to 30 million bolivars. The domicile was changed to Caracas and Emperatriz

Guevara was designated as the general manager of De Frente newspaper. The Manfredi brothers are

also the owners of Frontera newspaper of Mérida, whose director used to be Velázquez Alvaray until he

was elected as a magistrate.

The legal and work-related situation at De Frente remained unchanged until 2007, when the

regional elections campaign was about to start.

A change of cast

Congressman Rafael Simón Jiménez, who in the 90´s was the director of De Frente newspaper

and maintained close ties with Manfredi and Velázquez Alvaray, stated that that year the owners of

Italian descent sold the newspaper to a banker called Ricardo Fernández Barrueco, who already had a

long history of buying media in flatland states such as Portuguesa. However, the 2007 incorporation

papers of De Frente Barinas C.A. (a legal entity different from Inversora 435, the editor of De Frente)

registers that its owners were Miguel Ángel Méndez Cedeño and Miguel Quintero Hernández.

-I am certain that this is so -insisted Jiménez- because Miguel Quintero is the godfather of two of

my children, a great buddy of mine and we grew up together. The owner was Fernández Barrueco.

Jiménez assured us that Quintero, being the owner or legal representative of the newspaper,

initiated an ambiguous campaign which, far from favoring Adán Chávez in his election proposal,

maintained an unclear posture and was even accused of “benefitting Julio Reyes”. In the meantime,

Adán Chávez won the regional elections with 50.48% of the votes, and a minimum difference compared

to Julio César Reyes, who obtained 43.95%.

Miguel Quintero, aka el Gordo Quintero (¨fatso Quintero¨), an operator who was accountable

during his period as the owner as per the newspaper´s documents, acted as the director of

communications at the chancellor´s office of the republic during the term José Vicente Rangel, the

eminence gris of the chavista government, as was revealed in a report article by El Mundo newspaper of

Caracas by journalists Andrea Daza and Carjuan Cruz. He was also the editor of the now extinct

magazine called Pax. Certain versions have linked him to El Diario de Caracas and have portrayed him as

the liaison to the Chavista foreign service department and the guerrilla movements of Colombia.

At the beginning of 2009, Quintero and Méndez left the newspaper and yielded all their shares

to José Gregorio Camacho. The change in ownership coincided with an internal harassment campaign

against the journalists. Testimonials, all of which are confidential, relate that the head editors concealed

notes which were about to be published and which had been banned by the government headquarters

and that even the reporters, when drafting their articles, were subjected to excessive surveillance. At

the time, according to the National Record of Contractors quoted by journalists Daza and Cruz, the

principal clients of the newspaper were the legislative council of Barinas state, the Institute of Transport

and Roadworks of the state and Abundio Sánchez, the then mayor of the city of Barinas, who was in the

ballot with Adán Chávez at the 2008 elections.

A bit before the end of the year, José Gregorio Camacho sold his shares to Rubén Hernández

Remón and Eduardo José Hernández Remón, and later handed himself in to the authorities at the local

headquarters of the political police force, at the time still called Disip for its acronyms in Spanish

(Dirección de Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención, in English Department of Intelligence and Prevention

Services).

Barrueco´s Jungle

What had happened? Camacho was an attorney and partner of Ricardo Fernández Barrueco.

Fernández Barrueco was linked to the national government and at the time was a veritable

legend in the grapevines, as one of the fastest growing fortunes in the country in his role as producer

and distributer of foodstuffs for the State´s trading store chains. However, due to a twist of fate, the

magnate-to-be fell in disgrace towards the end of 2009. He was arrested as per orders by President

Chávez in midst of a financial crisis that dragged under four banks he owned: Bolívar, Canarias,

Confederado and Banpro. He was the owner of at least 266 companies registered in Venezuela, Panama,

the U.S., Curacao, Spain, Ecuador and Guatemala, among other countries. Also in his hands were

Molinos Nacionales (Monaca, the national mills and silos) and other companies that distributed and

processed foodstuffs with direct links to State-owned food selling chain Mercal. José Gregorio Camacho,

who appeared as the owner of De Frente in mid-2009, was presented as the shareholder of at least 90 of

the companies owned by Fernández Barrueco.

“Fernández Barrueco, at a petition by the Chávez clan, ousted Quintero, put Camacho in his

place and changed the entire editorial line”, congressman Jiménez continued, adding more parts in the

puzzle.

Barely a few months before falling in prison, Camacho sold all his shares in the newspaper to

Hernández Remón and Eduardo Hernández Remón for 20,000 bolivars fuertes (a bit more than 4,500

dollars at the official rate in force at the time).

Since then they are los the owners of the newspaper and maintain an editorial line that favors

the government. There are reasons for this. Rubén Hernández Remón is the spouse of Tania Díaz,

former minister of communications, former director of Venezolana de Televisión, congresswoman at the

national assembly and chair of the parliament´s media commission. Hernández Remón, besides being

the founder of the national assembly´s TV channel, is a filmmaker and has filmed some content for

Venezolana de Televisión, the government´s principal TV station.

When it came out again, El Sol shed light in a different manner

The editorial lines of the media in Maturín, the capital of Monagas state (to the east of

Venezuela), accommodate themselves according to the political interests of the time. Radio stations

have been very cautious and practically all opinion programs have disappeared off of the radio

frequencies; information programs limit themselves to reading press headlines.

When the El Sol newspaper stopped circulating for ten months, the official explanation given

was the lack of paper to print newspapers on. Meanwhile, the newspaper could only be consulted on

the Internet. Nevertheless, Jesús González, the media´s chief of information, declared that the non-

circulation was not due “specifically to the lack of paper. The newspaper was sold and a restructuring

was taking place”. When consulted on the new owners, he stated he did not know them and pointed out

that in the newspaper´s information appears Gustavo Planchart as the director of the editorial council.

According to the corporate mercantile dockets, Planchart is a shareholder of the newspaper since

February 16, 2011 and there is no new information in the docket since 2012.

González added that currently El Sol has no problems with raw material supplies. At present it

circulates Mondays to Fridays and works with a minuscule number of two journalists, much less than

prior to the temporary shutdown. In turn, the administrative area has the same number of employees.

He classified as “very normal” the change in content in the printed media and said that right now the

journalists have access to all news sources.

Jhoan Gutiérrez, journalist who has worked at the company for two and a half years, explained

that nobody was expecting this change in ownership. He said that out of six journalists, there are only

two left in the organization. “While we were publishing online the sources were reluctant to give us

information because the news was not printed on paper”.

María Moreno, in turn, has 20 years of experience in printed media and was fired during the

restructuring. “We were summoned to a meeting on the afternoon of September 4, 2013 and were told

that several employees would be let go because there was no way to keep them in the company. They

fired typesetters, graphic reporters and journalists”. The company sent them to the labor inspector´s

office to hear the case. “We were offered 5,000 bolivars each, plus 2,000 to stay silent”. After they were

liquidated, they found out that they were forbidden from entering the newspaper´s headquarters.

Now Moreno, who used to cover police-related news, sells candy bars, sweets and snacks at

home and has no desire to work once again for the media due to all the pressures: “We went to cover

news and later they were not published. This affected the communities, which later did not want to

offer declarations again. In several opportunities they protested or went to complain at the newspaper.

The information was truncated and the people passed to be secondary. To go and work at another

newspaper is tantamount to fall into the same old story. My deception is huge”.

No extra time

Jesús Alberto Puerta was the director of Extra newspaper of Monagas during eight years. He was

at the helm of the newspaper on December 17, 2012, the date of the last printed issue –precisely one

day after José Gregorio El Gato Briceño, former governor dissident of the chavista political party, lost the

elections. He recognizes that the media´s editorial line was always in pro of the former governor.

“I had the chance to interview him in Costa Rica and he assured me that he was not the owner

of the newspaper”, the journalist said.

The founder of Extra in 2000 was Claudio González. In January 2009 the printed media was sold

to the Guevara family (Miguel and Luisa) and in September of that year it was handed to the Farías

family (Wilfredo Farías and Dinora Zimeri de Farías).

Puerta stated that the Farías family were close friends of governor Briceño and when the ex-

governor was expelled from the ranks of the PSUV, the media´s editorial line changed: “We became an

opposition newspaper”. Although he admits that at the time the media´s directors instructed them to

draft special articles geared towards pointing out the failings of the central government of Hugo Chávez,

he assured us that he never received direct instructions from El Gato, the governor´s nickname.

In August 2012 the rotary printing press was confiscated from the newspaper. Its directors were

forced to contract out to third parties the printing of the newspapers through vendors in Anaco (a small

town in the neighboring Anzoátegui state, to the west of the country) and Puerto Ordaz (a city in Bolívar

state, to the south of the country) and to lower the number of issues printed from 12,000 to 5,000. “The

economic situation forced us to tighten our belts because it cost up to 15,000 bolivars to print the

newspaper”.

That somber December 17, 2012, the printed media circulated in black and white. Puerta

explained that it was due to a printing problem at Puerto Ordaz, but at the time in that city there was a

theory circulating that it was to mourn the El Gato losing the local elections. Collective vacations were

granted to all the employees, with the plan of starting circulation back again in January 2013, but this

never happened, despite the Farías family managing to purchase another rotary printing press from

Germany. All the employees were liquidated and the company declared bankruptcy. At the time of its

closing, the media had paper reserves which were confiscated last year.

The Farías family is under arrest, in their homes as the jail, and cannot leave their homes since

November 2013.

The Media Surrenders to PDVSA

It is known that the Venezuelan state-owned oil company has served as petty cash box for the

Bolivarian revolution and as everything else too: food producer and distributor, transporter, sports

sponsor, etc. Added to that long list, there is the role of editor of media located in oil basins in the inland

areas of the country, where the company controls TV networks and newspapers through the program of

Social Production Enterprises or capitalizing on their beliefs.

How many millions of bolivars the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, Sociedad

Anónima (PDVSA) invested in sponsoring regional media is still unknown. It is also unknown what the

exact reason for that is, besides the purpose‒ a characteristic of a traditional program of corporate

advertising‒ of guaranteeing a good presence on the marketing media and the agenda of the state-

owned oil holding.

The truth is that through the program of Social Production Enterprises (EPS, for its abbreviation

in Spanish), PDVSA took control of TV networks and newspapers. That is the case, for example, of

Catatumbo TV in Zulia state (western part of the country, northern border with Colombia), of the

network Televisora de Oriente (TVO) in Anzóategui state, and of the newspaper El Oriental, in Monagas

state (The last two states are located in the northeastern region of Venezuela).

In the cases of Catatumbo TV and El Oriental, the agreement with the state-owned oil company

is sealed in the commercial register of those companies; whereas in the case of TVO, the millionaire

accounts for advertising and for other services provided to PDVSA became in practice the main purpose

of the network ‒that signs their commitment to a programming dedicated to the image of the

corporation. In any case, the fact is that the company is showing an unusual interest in controlling the

media in their areas of influence.

Dark deals

The regional TV channel Catatumbo TV went off the air for a few months, in early September

2014, just after the President Nicolás Maduro had announced that Rafael Ramírez would cease to hold

his simultaneous positions of president of PDVSA and Minister of Energy and Petroleum, in order to be

transferred to the Foreign Ministry.

A month before that announcement was made and the signal went off the air, Public Affairs

officials of PDVSA Occidente, in Maracaibo (capital of Zulia state), stopped communicating with the

management of Catatumbo to give the guidelines for the daily agenda. The cessation announced to the

regional network's executives that problems were coming. And indeed, after the removal of Ramirez, all

employees returned home, thinking they were unemployed and waiting to be rehired. What could be

the link between changes in the ministerial cabinet in Caracas, with the closure of a media in Zulia state?

That is explained by a journalist who worked at the TV station since 2011 and who asked not to

be named. He is sure that the network's owner is Rafael Ramírez‒something that cannot be verified in

the public records because the company's legal department does not allow it‒and that his rotation

caused the immediate closure of the station. In his years as a reporter, the source received direct orders

from the department of Public Affairs of PDVSA, while his boss on the organization chart of the media,

Judith Guevara, told him repeatedly that the important thing for the station were neither the

Government nor Francisco Arias Cárdenas, the state's governor for the ruling United Socialist Party of

Venezuela (PSUV), but the activities of state-owned oil company and the events of its cultural branch,

PDVSA La Estancia, led by Ramirez's wife, Beatrice Sansó de Ramírez. According to that same testimony,

in journalistic schedule the opposition sector was banned. The opposition mayor of Maracaibo state,

Eveling Trejo de Rosales, would be air only when she was criticized, also prescribed the editorial line.

The TV signal went back on the air in mid-November 2014. According to an employee of

advertising agency of the TV channel, Douglas Pirela, Catatumbo TV went off the air because a

transmitter stopped working and the employees never left their workplace. “The TV channel continued

to function and never closed its doors, except that their programming was not broadcast” explained

Pirela.

According to the constituent document of Catatumbo TV, its owners are David Pernía and Luz

Amelia Fuenmayor. Although the company was registered on March 26th, 2010, there is attached to its

commercial register an extraordinary meeting on February 26th, 2010, that occurred before its

constitution. In this meeting the two shareholders considered subscribing Catatumbo TV to the program

of Social Production Enterprises (EPS), promoted by the National Executive and implemented by PDVSA.

“Among other things, the program is formed by a set of commitments linked to the active

participation of private capital in the hiring done by PDVSA and its affiliates aimed at promoting

economic and social development in the country. The set of commitment consist of: the participation in

PDVSA's social fund, the development and assistance of small businesses, including giving support in

developing systems and technologies and in establishing permanent programs for the insertion of these

companies in the production system ...” Basically, the station agreed to join the thematic agenda of

PDVSA. These commitments are acquired by Catatumbo in the signing of a contract with PDVSA. In

2013, as last change showed in the Commercial Register, Judith Guevara was included as a board

member.

A repeated pattern

But the TV channel, which only transmitted through an open signal, is suspended from the

National Register of Contractors (RNC) since August 2014 for not updating their data. That document

specifies that Pernia and Fuenmayor are the presidents, whereas Guevara is listed as vice president.

The list of services only shows PDVSA as a client of the TV channel, with contracts since 2012.

Although it is a TV channel that profits from advertising, PDVSA paid them for the supply of other

services: the rental of camera equipment, the broadcast of housing development Maisanta, the

transmission of the graduation of the Misión Ribas' students, the transmission of information support

for Venezolana de Televisión, among other examples

Miguel David Pernía Requena and Judith Guevara are a couple. Pernía was also vice president of

the Televisora de Oriente (TVO), the regional TV channel of Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui state.

Pernia and Guevara also have an advertising in the city of Maracaibo called Europea de

Innovaciones, with a capital of two million 900 thousand bolivars (about $ 17,000 , according to the

maximum official rate of exchange currently valid, Simadi). Its clients are the Televisora de Oriente

(TVO), Catatumbo TV and PDVSA. To date Pernia has not answered the interview requests on this story.

The headquarter of Catatumbo is located at 70th street with 27th Avenue in the sector Santa

María in Maracaibo. The TV channel City Televisión functioned there until early 2009, a regional

television station that, according to Nikary González, member of the National Association of Journalists,

showed a fairly balanced programming, which was not very identified with the ruling party, despite

having direct links to sections of the national Government. Its director and founder was Oscar Silva

Araque, a well-known journalist in Maracaibo, who in 2014 would go to the top of the executive board

of Globovisión in Caracas, after it was bought by new investors.

City went bankrupt right after the regional elections of 2008, in which Manuel Rosales, former

governor of Zulia state, and former opposition presidential candidate in 2006 against Hugo Chávez was

elected mayor of Maracaibo. In those elections, Rosales defeated the regime's candidate and then

mayor, Giancarlo Di Martino.

At least three journalists, who refused to be identified because they work in government media,

say that the defeat of Di Martino was instrumental for the closure of City TV. Oscar Silva, its president,

also had an advertising and communicational advisory company called Printers, based in Maracaibo. Its

clients, according to the National Register of Contractors, were the Municipal Housing Institute of the

state capital of Zulia state, the company La Energía Eléctrica de Venezuela (ENELVEN, for its acronym in

Spanish), Maracaibo's subway, the municipality of Maracaibo, the municipal service of gas,

petrochemical company Pequiven, the National Institute for Educational Cooperation (Ince, for its

acronym in Spanish) and PDVSA, all advertisers of the State. These contracts expired before 2008, when

Di Martino left office.

Silva sold the TV channel to Pernía in addition to a radio station, City Radio 99.1, today known as

Catatumbo 99.1, still functioning. Silva, besides in Globovisión, also found a job as an external consultant

for the newspaper El Universal after its controversial sale in 2014.

The pattern of the EPS is repeated in the documentation of the newspaper El Oriental of the city

of Maturín, state capital of Monagas, far away from Maracaibo, about 1,000 miles east.

Although circulating for 32 years, El Oriental started showing signs of a structural change in

February 2014. Then it changed hands, according to the Constitutive Act which lies on the Mercantile

Registry of Maturín. Its new owners are Virginio and Gaetano Constantino Silvestri, two brothers with

companies listed on the National Register of Contractors, which provide services of maintenance and

construction of civil works, most them related to efforts carried out by mayors or governors. The

companies have works both in Anzoátegui state and in Monagas state. Its capital is one million bolivars

(or $ 5,882, the highest official exchange rate).

Gaetano Constantino assured that he made the investment, since the work of the media has

always “gotten his attention”. “We were given the opportunity. I have never had political pressure.” The

former owner was Tirso Ramos Linares, who allegedly has always been linked with certain sectors of the

social democratic party Acción Democrática (AD).

Mercedes Marín, director of that media, assures that there was no change in the editorial line

whatsoever: “This media is managed with a wide range, it was mostly was a change of processes”

In the visible, the media changed its image and design. About the journalists who left, following

the change of owners, Marín said that they excluded themselves, since they were “unable to adapt to

change.” Constantino stated that when he took over the newspaper, they only had four borrowed paper

rolls, a situation that, in any case, they have already overcome.

In its commercial register it is clear that El Oriental is part of the Program of Social Production

Enterprises (EPS), promoted by the national Government and managed by PDVSA. To participate in the

program, El Oriental is committed to contributing to the development of that system and to presenting

works “that improve the situation of nearby communities” and other items included in a contract with

PDVSA.

Another Eastern Plot

In the network of business links that go through the funnel of PDVSA, the name of David Pernia,

central in the business of Catatumbo TV, emerges linked to the recent history of the TVO.

Founded in 1985 by the Cirigliano family, the Televisora de Oriente (TVO) is the reference of the

regional television in Anzoátegui state. Several generations of journalists were forged there. Now,

however, it is a black box. From its content can be easily deduced that it is under the aegis of PDVSA.

Programs such as Noticiero TVO, Diálogo Bolivariano, Ventana del Pueblo and Debate Necesario show a

clear inclination towards the ruling party. However, unlike Catatumbo TV, it does not take part in the

EPS.

In 2013, the company PDVSA Petróleo Sociedad Anónima was the largest debtor company of

that media, with an invoice of 3 million 334 thousand 687 bolivars (back then just over a million dollars);

while the company PDVSA owed 19 thousand 550 bolivars. In addition to the companies of the oil

holding, TVO held credits from other official advertisers like the Petrochemical Company of Venezuela

for 33,790 bolivars, and the National Electoral Council (CNE, for its acronym in Spanish) for 16 thousand

187 bolivars‒ those are great sums of money, but only a fraction of what PDVSA had to pay to TVO.

In 2010, David Pernía, the same one from Catatumbo TV, was vice president of the TV channel.

During his management, TVO had juicy advertising contracts with the municipalities of Sucre, Anaco,

Peñalver, Guana, Sotillo and El Morro. He also had deals with the network Televisora Venezolana Social,

the governance of Sucre and the Ministry of Communication and Information, among other government

agencies.

Now William Ramón Galvis Rodríguez is the president of TVO. He is there since 2012, just when

Alejandro Gabaldón, his predecessor, and David Pernía, left the company.

Galvis has left a clear trail during his time in the administration of public companies. In 2003 he

was appointed CFO and head of the Central Administrative Unit of the National Electoral Council (CNE).

His management began on November 11th of that year, according to the Official Gazette No. 37,819.

Then in 2008, as announced in the Official Gazette No. 38,946, Galvis Rodríguez was left in

charge of the Directorate-General of the Office of Planning, Budget and Systems of the Ministry of

Tourism. In 2009 he was the deputy director of Venezolana de Turismo (Venetur for its acronym in

Spanish), according to the National Register of Contractors. However, on the official website of this

organization his name does not appear in the organizational chart.

The Cirigliano Martínez family founded TVO in 1985, according to the First Mercantile Registry

of Anzoátegui state, and has control of the company through another legal entity, Promociones Club,

which in turn owns 90 percent of the shares‒or 49,850 shares‒of the television station. It started with a

capital of one million bolivars. Galvis Rodríguez is listed in the documents as representative of

Promociones Club in the board of the company.

Pascual Cirigliano Martínez was the president of TVO until July 2010. Then a period of apparent

instability followed. Renato Gutiérrez Padrón was president until the arrival of the pair of Gabaldón and

Pernía. Then both resigned and Galvis came. By 2012 the company had available a capital that went over

20 million bolivars (about three million dollars to official exchange date).

Politics Changes Newspaper

A news media founded in Zulia state in 2006, “Final Version”, changes owners‒and therefore, its

editorial line‒as the political winds changes its direction in the region. Now the media is in the hands of a

family of entrepreneurs that does not deny they relationship with the Governor.

Manuel Rosales was the governor of Zulia state (northwestern part of Venezuela, near the

border with Colombia) when the weekly newspaper Versión Final became a daily newspaper. That was

not the only change that the newspaper went through: It opened a new headquarters on the avenue

Avenida Universidad in Maracaibo city. Among those invited to the opening gala on September 8th, 2008,

the host, Alexander Montilla, director of that media outlet, welcomed Rosales, the US consul, the

director of the newspaper El Nacional, the president of the insurance company Multinacional de

Seguros and the then director of Globovisión, among other representatives of local and the capital's

driving forces. The message was clear: the newspaper was stood firm on its feet and challenged the

duopoly of the regional press that La Verdad and Panorama held, an opposition and a pro-government

newspaper, respectively.

Just two years before, in February 2006, Montilla had constituted with María Eugenia Farías,

the editorial company of Versión Final, with a capital of 250 million bolivars (now 250,000 bolivars ,

about $ 5,000, according to highest official exchange rate). Montilla is mentioned on the constituent

document with 2,500 shares, and Farías has the remaining 247,500.

Despite its status as the majority shareholder on paper, Farías was never seen inside the

newspaper. Raúl Semprún, the editor then, recognizes that all editorial decisions were made by Montilla

and Farías had no say in the schedule of the day or in the changing of the front-page headline. During

the months following the opening of the headquarters of the newspaper, its reporters claimed to have

lived the best moments: they had a salary twice as big as the minimum wage, which is a privilege in the

inland areas of the country; the newspaper was one of the few that respected all the benefits stipulated

in the law and even had complimentary snacks in the cafeteria.

In the meantime, Manuel Rosales‒who in 2006 went against Hugo Chávez as opposition

presidential candidate‒finished his term as governor and ran for mayor of Maracaibo. If during the

campaign, Rosales' face became a constant presence on the front page of Versión Final, this only was

accentuated once he defeated the chavista candidate, Giancarlo Di Martino, who wanted to repeat as

mayor.

But in that month of December 2008, the month of his electoral victory, Rosales was charged

with alleged fund embezzlement when he was governor. In the documents of the Supreme Court of

Justice (TSJ, for its abbreviation in Spanish) on the case, the name of María Eugenia Farías emerges.

When an arrest warrant against him was issued, Rosales disappeared and eventually obtained political

asylum in Peru in April 2009.

Due to an eloquent parallelism, the fall into disgrace and the flight of Rosales coincided with a

sharp deterioration in the situation of the employees of Versión Final. In the Christmas season of 2008,

they recall, it was not until December 22th at six o'clock, in extremis, that they could collect their

Christmas bonuses, at the same time the employees of the government collected their bonuses and

they were left under the direction of Rosales's pupil Pablo Pérez, future governor of Zulia state and

presidential pre-candidate.

Since then, journalists had no raise in more than two years. The editorial staff was decreasing.

There were no new personnel. Almost all information published came from third parties, mainly news

webs on the Internet.

Finally, in December 2012, Pablo Pérez and his formula of a regional party Un Nuevo Tiempo

(UNT, for its abbreviation in Spanish) was defeated in the elections for governor against the chavista

candidate, Francisco Arias Cárdenas, who was a former governor of Zulia state for the party La Causa R

and even before, was one of the commanders who accompanied the Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez in

his 1992 coup attempt.

The electoral outcome seemed to serve as a sign for Montilla, who, as editor, opened up more

space on the pages of the newspaper for pro-government spokesmen. He changed the heads of

journalistic activity, and new heads included pieces that were openly flattering to the opinions of the

ruling party.

However, the change of course was not enough. In March 2013 the newspaper stopped

circulating for a week. Although Montilla never gave a public explanation, the rumor attributed the

situation to shortage of newsprint that then punished various media throughout the country.

The number of pages had been already reduced before. Weeks later, without the help of any

ads, the newspaper's warehouse filled with paper rolls. According, again, to the rumors, the newspaper

had changed owner.

Change of Owners, Change of Skin

Indeed, on August 27th, 2013, the change in the shareholding control of the newspaper was

finalized. In a meeting held that day at 11:00 am, Farías resigned as majority shareholder and gave her

place to Vincenzo Alaimo, who was invited to the meeting. On January 27th, 2014, the sale of shares

would be completed, as appears in the minutes included in the file. Vincenzo Alaimo is the son of

Calogero Alaimo; both of them own, among other things, the private hospital La Sagrada Familia in

Maracaibo and a weekly newspaper called Informe. They have companies in Venezuela, United States

and Spain, and are recognized as financiers of the campaign that made the Venezuelan Luigi Borgia

mayor of city of Doral (located on the outskirts of Miami, Florida).

A few months late, on May 9th, 2014, Alaimo acquired the shares of Montilla in order to have

100 % of the participation.

The change of ownership brought new airs to the company

In November 2014 began an incessant search for talent for Versión Final. Some managers from

other media, such as Mi Diario, went to restructure its pages. They raised the salaries and notified that

this time the journalism would not be dedicated to benefiting the opposition leaders in the region, but

would only tell the facts. However, its front page still shows big headlines favoring the regional

Government.

The new administration also insisted in restoring at least part of the original editorial staff,

dispersed by political changes of Montilla, and in activating its marketing department.

By early 2014 there was already a large staff in the newsroom. Carlos Moreno, who worked on

the staff of Versión Final in 2008 as a politics journalist, is the head of the newspaper. Whereas Raúl

Semprún, the former Editor in Chief, only has the nerves to compare from a reader's perspective the

editorial line of the current Versión Final with the one of the tabloid Últimas Noticias in Caracas, after

selling of the tabloid to a mysterious group of investors: behind a facade of balance and subjection to

the facts, the newspaper supports the Governor Arias Cárdenas‒although at a time is criticizes the

central Government of Nicolás Maduro.

Alaimo: “The Government is right about some media having political positions”

Calogero Alaimo, or Carlos as he is known in Maracaibo, does not mince his words and also makes no

bones in talking about his role as editor of Versión Final.

How was the transition from the health business to the media?

We are a group that is in different economic sector, health is our first commercial activity and the

second on is construction. We are also in the insurance sector. Salud Vital is a pre-paid medicine

company, I am president of Zulia Fútbol Club , and I have always been interested in the media; since I

was in medical school , I had my own university newspaper, we founded the first weekly newspaper in

Zulia state, which was Informe, and now we have it on the web . A year ago the opportunity came to buy

Versión Final, and because we believe that are newspaper with a wider presence is needed, we chose to

expand our commercial activity. We already had a radio station that is Líder FM; the media has always

been close to me.

But the conditions in which you acquired that media are not the same now, because the state has

established more restrictions. Why did you go through with it in a scenario of greater limitations?

I have not felt any pressure. The family bought the media because we like it and are passionate about it.

Don't you feel you put your capital at risk?

No. Venezuelan entrepreneurs have to learn to take risks. We do not invest in a business because we

have a friend in the government, that is not the concept of the family Alaimo, that is not the principle of

what an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur, who does not take risks, should not be an entrepreneur and

needs to find a steady job, I do not feel threatened by the Government. The Government is also right in

when it states that there are media that want to use their strength and power to take positions and get

involved in politics. That is not our case.

What reasons did María Eugenia Farías and Alexander Montilla give as to why they sold the company

to you?

That the newspaper was not profitable for them and so they sold it. But we were able to improve some

of the indicators: this newspaper tripled its circulation; we doubled the pages on the weekends and

developed the content.

What do you attribute this to?

To the fact that we are producing a good newspaper

And how have you managed to carry out that positive management amidst the crisis of paper that

suffers a lot of the Venezuelan press?

I paid six months of paper in advance. The Venezuelan entrepreneur has to understand that times have

changed. It is not buying a company and paying it in two years, this is a long term project. When I

bought the company there was no marketing management, none whatsoever, the staff was underpaid,

and there were not many clients in the newspaper because it did not allow other companies to get

involved. I am glad that 95 % of our clients are private. This newspaper does not rely on the support of a

public institution of any color or tendency to circulate. Our unbiased and balanced plurality makes all

the tendencies‒right, left, neither, the civil society‒ feel represented.

Would you admit that there was a change in the editorial line after the entry of Alaimo group?

No. I do not think the previous owners were doing an opposition newspaper.

Despite its links with Manuel Rosales?

Yes, okay, they were attached to the people of Manuel Rosales, but I think they lacked more coverage

and news and had an increase of the capital was needed but it was not getting done. The Companies in

any sector need to inject money. We have tripled the payroll this year and improved working conditions.

So, how do you think your editorial line is?

Ask our readers. You see a story on Capriles (Henrique, governor of Miranda state and leader of the

opposition) besides Maduro, and besides Maduro there is also Eveling (Trejo de Rosales, Mayor of

Maracaibo) and next to Aveling there is Arias. We do not do politics, we write the news in good and

timely manner.

Would you agree with the idea that you are closer to the national Government than to any other

political force?

This newspaper is not at the service of a political cause, it is at the best service of the information for

the citizens, so that they get for themselves the best idea of what is happening in the country. We

denounce the lines (in the supermarket to buy food), the chip (electronic device that the Government

had put in vehicles of the region to ration its fuel), the bachaqueo (retail smuggling of products to

Colombia), but we don't get involved in the case. We make investigative journalism. There are some

media that take that trench as political parties and that will not happen in Versión Final.

How do you keep your other businesses from getting harmed or punished because of the news

content?

The government evaluates and assesses the role of each entrepreneur; we denounce the shortage of

medical supplies. What we review

And has that not harmed the allocation of foreign currencies to get the supplies for your hospital?

No, because the Government knows we are reporting fairly, we are not maximizing the effects of bad

management, we also talk about management. We inform, we don't express our opinion. We do not try

to direct the people's way of thinking.

Are your other businesses not in favor of a party or government?

We have service companies. The construction company, the insurance company and the clinic all serve

and we do not look at political tendencies. We are the best clinic of Zulia state and the third of the

country. First comes PDVSA (the state-owned oil company) and then the Municipality of Maracaibo (in

the hands of the opposition).

But one of your daughters was married to a son of Arias Cárdenas

That has nothing to do with it.

Could you feel a commitment to the Governor due to that family relationship?

I was the father-in-law of the son of Arias Cárdenas, but we don't have common grandchildren. His son

has remarried twice, my daughter also remarried. The divorce was ten years ago.

Do you deny any sort of impact?

Not at all. I am a friend of Arias Cárdenas, I do not deny my friendships, not with Rosales and not with

Eveling. I'm not fighting with neither one of them. The politics should never separate the men. This

trend of wanting to pair me with Arias in the familiar scenery does not hold. Also, I supported Arias

Cárdenas before our children knew each other. He has had my love, affection and admiration since 1993

when he arrived in Maracaibo to find friends and support, and I was one of the independents who

backed him up. I supported his project, I believed in him and our children didn't know each other.

And that does not influence in boosting his management now?

I have to talk about his management the same way that I talk about Eveling's management and the

ministries and other mayors and other companies. This newspaper is open to promote public and

private initiatives.

Also the international initiatives, because there is information about your relationship with Luigi

Boria, mayor of the city of Doral, in the state of Florida.

Luigi Boria was a man I met on the phone , he asked me a favor and I did just as I would do for any other

commissioner candidate in the city of Doral. When I was kidnapped in 2004 I moved to Doral for four

years, I have good friends there, and on several occasions candidates asked me for support and I gave it

to them, as I did to Luigi Boria. He received help from me without me knowing him.

What was the support about?

About me renting him a place to an affordable price and that was it and those who ran against him tried

to use that. I was in a fight that isn't my own.

Does that mean that you have investments in the U.S.A.?

I do for 20 years.

Where are you the most confident to invest in?

Venezuela is my homeland, I'm not going to leave but I'm a global man. I have also invested in Spain,

Aruba, and the U.S.A.

What do you think you still have to do in the company?

Continue to grow, have more content in the newspaper, y magazines. That's coming.

Is there censorship in your newspaper?

There is no censorship.

And in Venezuela?

No. I don't feel the censorship. The media has always complained about the censorship, in the times of

Lusinchi (Jaime, president of Venezuela from 1984 until 1989) and of Carlos Andrés Pérez (former

president of Venezuela on two occasions) and that happens when the media wants to play a political

role.

What is your opinion on the fired journalists and cartoonists?

That it shouldn't happen.

Have you met the owners of El Universal of Caracas?

I don't. It is said that it was Victor Vargas of the BOD. I don't know. If he did buy it, that's great. I wish I

could have bought it.

Why didn't you become a journalist?

Because I love medicine.

Who would you have liked to interview?

Robert Kennedy.

Why not Chávez?

Chávez too. I used to talk with Chávez.

Were you friends?

Not friends, but I did meet him.

Have you met Maduro?

No. I'm from the Social Christian school. I do not deny my roots and I am a student of (the former

Foreign Minister Arístides) Calvani, that's all.

And the Minister, Delcy Rodríguez, (former minister of Communication and Information, and now

foreign minister)?

I don't.

Was it possible to pay six months’ worth of paper through the Cencoex (the entity that replaced

Cadivi in the administration of the exchange control regime in 2004)?

No. I bought it from the complex Afredo Moreno (a state in charge of supplying newsprint)

But the complex is not producing paper…

But they do the intermediation. I used that. I'm not an importer

What do you think you have that other owners don't to get that allocation?

I don´t go around crying. It is a call for entrepreneurs

Crime and punishment in the media of Bolívar state

The murder of one of its owners and imprisonment on corruption charges of another preceded

the editorial fate of two newspapers in Guayana, as vulnerable to government pressures as its peers in

other parts of the country. Changing hands after these events and the sale of another regional

newspaper have been the trigger for resignations and changes in the information coverage of events in

the region and nationwide.

The crime (I)

The news did not go unnoticed in Guayana, the vastly rich region to the south of Orinoco River.

Entrepreneur Rubén Gamarra, owner of an emporium which included the Nueva Prensa de Guayana

newspaper, had died on November 17, 2008, the same date as his 14 years married anniversary. What in

principle seemed to be a heart attack later became - in light of a toxicological expertise performed-

death by poisoning and all evidence pointed to his then spouse, Jalousie Fondacci, as the main suspect.

Fifteen years prior, Gamarra and Fondacci had also united to start a business in the media

industry. On May 26, 1993, in the mercantile registry office of the judiciary circuit of Bolívar state, an

editorial mercantile society was registered as Sociedad Mercantil Editorial R.G., C.A.. Gamarra owned

22,500 shares and Jalousie Fondacci de Gamarra 2,500, representing a capital stock –20% of which was

paid- of 25 million bolivars. A sentence by the supreme court of justice disclosed this, only after

Gamarra´s death, since the original company constitution document has not appeared at the time of its

request and the archive holder indicated that she suspects that one of the attorneys acting in the

criminal case subtracted it.

Two cups of coffee were what the entrepreneur of Peruvian origin and nationalized Venezuelan,

drank on the day of his death. The second one, poured out by his assistant, Solange Sánchez, is the one

suspected of causing his demise. Blood samples gave an indication of a “poison intoxication” with a

chemical used in domestic household products to kill rats. The findings were “metomyle and coumarinic

derivates (…) confirming as the cause of death poisoning with rat poison”, according to the legal docket

of the case.

From 1993 to 2008 the media emporium of Guayana had expanded. The Gamarra-Fondacci

marriage had a company which in 2005 had increased its capital stock to 300 million bolivars and 80% of

the shares in Gamarra´s hands and 20% owned by Fondacci, as per the sentence of the trial on “action of

inheritance unworthiness”, filed by the children of Gamarra against the former wife of their father,

Jalousie Fondacci.

That same November 17, 2008, Jalousie had called Sánchez 19 times from Peru so that she

bought a flower arrangement for Gamarra as celebration of their anniversary, Últimas Noticias reported.

Two days later, Gamarra´s remains were cremated, coordinated by his spouse from Peru. When the

process had started since an hour and 45 minutes, a CICPC commission stopped the cremation. “The

toxicological report had arrived from Caracas, confirming the initial suspicion of poisoning”, the

newspaper indicated.

The punishment (I)

As a result thereof, Jalousie Fondacci, widow of Gamarra and singled out as the alleged

intellectual author of the crime, and Solángel Álvarez, intellectual material author of the crime, were

arrested. Fondacci broke her silence two and a half years later and gave her version of the story,

published by Nueva Prensa de Guayana:

I never thought to take anything away from anybody, and the desire for

more could not be expressed better than by those children: a low blow at

the time of greatest weakness. It took twenty-five (25) days after the father

died to find the culprits of a murder which never happened, of poisoning

invented by naiveté.

It was all orchestrated in the Machiavellian mind of who dictated

(with no physical evidence or medical-pathological suspicion) that Rubén

Gamarra had been poisoned because a close family member, very close to

him had gone through the same circumstances.

(…)

Perhaps not many details of the ways in which this lie was

orchestrated; the police received calls (where the perpetrators moved live a

fish in the ocean) from the interested parties, fraudulent payments to buy

silence and the consent of a national district attorney who received all the

investigative glory.

I clarify: at the time of his demise I was not in the country, I was

residenced with my three children at Rubén´s request and of mutual consent

devoid of marital conflicts as some people tried to point out) in Lima, an

alternative decision to overcome a medical condition through therapies and

rest from work stress and from my modus vivendi; it is no secret to anybody

these moments of anguish experienced in specific times in this city due to

the countless abductions and kidnappings. We felt that a Damocles sword

was upon our heads.

The demise of Rubén Gamarra and the inheritance conflict inevitably translated into a dispute

for control over the newspaper. On Monday June 13, 2013, the first court on civil, mercantile and

agricultural affairs of the second circuit of Bolívar state sentenced the designation of María Cequea as ad

hoc administrator of Sociedad Mercantil R.G., C.A. and Carmen Zoraida Cordero as ad hoc commissary of

the company.

“A very particular affair of the newspaper was reflected in the daily work environment”,

recounted María Alba Toledo, who worked at the Nueva Prensa de Guayana newspaper as journalist of

the economics and politics news sources from 2011 to 2014. The newspaper initially was directed by the

spouse of the founder of the newspaper and later by an ad hoc board which has mediated to balance

the interests of the parties in conflict.

Toledo tells that in the interim she found lists of vetoed topics and persons. In the end, she

opted for leaving the newspaper. “It expanded slowly”, she recognizes, “to a point where you can no

longer do your job, not at all how you expect to do it, and you tell yourself if you cannot change this

then it´s better to get out”.

Opinion columns ceased to be published in the newspaper only to give space to texts sent by

governor Francisco Rangel Gómez, stated Jorge Muziotti, the former sports section coordinator and

coordinator of correspondents at the Nueva Prensa de Guayana from 2010 to May 2014. He stated that

he was never censored except for a football match where he was instructed to write in his column that

the security had been a success thanks to operations by the governor´s office of Bolívar state. But he

had to censor: “There were certain political personalities who could not appear in the newspaper. I had

to call the correspondent and tell him that such and such person could not be published and not to write

the note about that”, he confessed.

Administrative changes were observed in the way of handling the media as recalled by the

journalists who worked there. Sometimes the changes were completed without conflict, but in other

cases, heated discussions took place between Luis Vera, an associate of Gamarra´s children, and the

journalists, which frequently ended the discussion by handing in their resignation.

Jalousie Fondacci and Solange Sánchez have appealed to Venezuelan justice. In a writ filed by

their attorneys, on February 12, 2014 the court found inadmissible the request to annul the sentence

ratifying the acceptance of a continuation request on the preventive legal deprivation of freedom filed

by the district attorney.

The crime (II)

Public opinion in Bolívar state once again focused on the case of an entrepreneur linked to the

media and a crime: Yamal Mustafá, a businessman handling almost three out of every four contracts

issued by the local government´s office, was deprived of his freedom on July 18, 2013 for his ties to a

corruption case. The public prosecutor informed the following day that a hearing would be held on the

case since he was the representative of a company entitled Muszam Investment and “for his alleged link

to irregularities committed at CVG Ferrominera del Orinoco C.A. during the term of its former chairman,

Radwan Sabbagh”.

Four years previously, the entrepreneur had started working as an editor. In 2009, jointly with

Celestino Adames (former editing boss at the Nueva Prensa de Guayana) he founded the weekly

newspaper El Crítico. The publication disappeared after the creation of their next media enterprise:

Primicias, presented as a company with an initial capital of 200 thousand bolivars, called Editorial de

Primicias, at the mercantile registry office of Bolívar state on June 1st, 2010, whose equal shareholders

were him and his spouse Mary Rosa Rodríguez. Venimpres, also registered by Mustafá and Mary Rosa

Rodríguez, is in charge of the printing of the newspaper.

The same day when Mustafá was arrested in 2013, he had gone to the courts of Bolívar state to

file a lawsuit against El Correo del Caroní newspaper and its chairman David Natera, for damages and

prejudice. As reported by Primicia this was to “sue David Natera Febres and mercantile society Editorial

Roderick C.A., editor of El Correo del Caroní, for damages and prejudice as a result of the slander

campaign undertaken against him and his family. This civil lawsuit was coupled to the criminal case

pending”. He requested that El Correo del Caroní and the local media be forbidden from publishing

information on the legal investigations linking him to alleged corruption cases at CVG Ferrominera del

Orinoco.

The court sentenced in favor of Mustafá on July 22, 2013 and requested that the newspaper

“abstain from publishing or allowing the publication of, subjective or prejudicial information issued

directly or indirectly, faked or figurative, related to citizen Yamal Mustafá, as well as information

referring to any other criminal process to be implemented against him, which could be construed as

damaging to his constitutional rights, such as due process, the presumption of innocence, the right to his

honor and reputation and the right to the integrity of persons and their family members, proceeding to

publish information that is objective and as per the journalistic code of ethics”, until the lawsuit against

Natera for slander and injury, filed by Mustafá, was not resolved.

Three months after the arrest of Mustafá, in October 2013, Denisse Bocanegra, ninth control

judge of the metropolitan area, issued a warrant for the seizure of assets against six persons linked to

the corruption case known as “el cartel del hierro” (the iron cartel), which according to the press implied

the loss of more than one billion dollars for the Venezuelan State. There was a warrant to seize Yamal

Mustafá´s assets together with those of five former functionaries of CVG Ferrominera del Orinoco.

In Mustafá´s case, the seizure included companies such as Editorial de Primicias, among other

investments by the entrepreneur. However, by mid-2014, the company books at the mercantile registry

office of Bolívar state had not included any reference to the attachment/seizure.

The punishment (II)

The vast majority of the journalists and former workers at the Primicia newspaper contacted for

this story are fearful of speaking or giving a statement. They talk of pressures and cases of censorship

inside the newspaper, but prefer not to be quoted.

Sebastián Cisternas worked as a journalist at the newspaper from April to November 2013,

before the intervention of the newspaper. He recalled that in times of protests he was not permitted to

use certain words in the summaries of the protests and that topics such as the Ferrominera corruption

scandal or denunciations against the governor were sensitive topics at the newspaper. “Andrés

Velásquez (congressman for La Causa Radical) was vetoed from the newspaper, the student movement

was also vetoed, and yes, there were many uncomfortable topics because in the end the front page was

always devoted to the governor. There were many interests involved”.

Cisternas´ resignation from Primicia went hand in hand with a tense and hostile environment at

the newspaper, apart from the censorship which prevented the telling of tales happening in the streets

as well as power groups influencing what was published: “for example, you covered a news about a

certain politician, or a certain topic, and then you got scolded and even threatened with being fired”.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTERVIEW:

Víctor Casado / Director of El Luchador from 2005 to 2011 / Former director of Electricidad de

Ciudad Bolívar

A conflict with the governor of the state, Francisco Rangel Gómez, was the motive for the sale

of the newspaper

Pressures exerted against the staff of the newspaper and threats against one of the owners was

the spark that ignited the change of hands of the media in Ciudad Bolívar. Threats of imprisonment

against Víctor Casado as well as the economic fencing off suffered by El Luchador were some of the

reasons presented by its former director as triggers for the sale of the newspaper, which happened in

2010.

Political pressures have accompanied the history of El Luchador, which started circulating under

the name El Anunciador in 1905 after Agustín Suegart founded it. But the uncomfortable feeling

expressed by the then president Cipriano Castro over the publication triggered a change of name, since,

as mentioned in Producto magazine of Caracas, “that was when El Luchador came to being. In 1969 the

newspaper changed its format to a tabloid to butt heads against El Bolivarense. And so it remained until

1978, when it stopped circulating”.

It reopened its doors in 2005 when businessmen Simeón García –at the time the owner of the

local electricity company as well as Aserca airlines- and Víctor Casado bought the brand, which remained

as a company registered on August 1st of that year. But the pressures once again arrived at the

newspaper, and several changes of owners have taken place since 2010.

The documents of El Luchador C.A. show a special shareholders´ meeting on May 14, 2011 in

which shareholders Braulio Merino Alonso and Daniel Merino Riva sold all their shares to Ildemaro

Guzmán Aguirre, who was then appointed the chairman of the company after the purchase in the

amount of 350,000 bolivars (some 80,000 dollars at the official exchange rate of the time). The

document of the meeting was drafted by Wilmer Rafael Gil Jaime, partner at the law firm owned by

Yamal Mustafá, the owner of Primicia, and witness in his trial.

Víctor Casado, one of the businessmen who relaunched the publication in 2005, tells that

although in his mind there was never the intention of selling it, he finally had to because he was

subjected to threats of imprisonment, exacerbated by the legal insecurity.

What was the motive for the sale of El Luchador?

There were many factors which had an influence on my decision of selling El Luchador, although it was

never really in my plans. The conflict with the governor of the state, Francisco Rangel

Gómez, his constant threats to put me in jail, the economic fencing off from the department of public

affairs (of the local governor´s office) on the newspaper and its announcers, and the lack of rule of law

which could take place if the threats materialized, were the reasons that prevailed the most in making

the decision.

Were there any government pressures for it to be sold?

Direct pressure from the regional government no, but indirect yes. Threats by the circles close to Rangel,

pressures on the newspaper´s journalists and unfounded denunciations by a congressman, at the time a

supporter of Rangel, were direct messages to harass me or, at least, keep me away from the newspaper.

When you sold the shares, did you have to make a decision to downsize the staff?

No, never. Not even in the worse crisis of the newspaper did I take measures to reduce the number of

personnel. When I sold I requested and recommended the buyer not to take any action to downsize the

staff. The people working at El Luchador for me were the most important asset the newspaper had.

How would you define the editorial line of El Luchador during your administration?

Completely balanced. We were not an opposition newspaper but neither were we pro-government. Our

mission was to timely inform our readers, providing exact, veracious and impartial information and at

the same time permitting the participation of all persons to freely express themselves.

According to the mercantile records, the owners as of 2011 were Braulio Alonso, Daniel Merino and

Ildemaro Guzmán. Did the sale of your shares take place prior to that date?

I sold my shares in 2010. 50% to Braulio Merino Alonso (who decided to put his son´s name as the

shareholder) and 50% to Ildemaro Guzmán, who represented a group of investors led by Oscar Jiménez,

at the time the owner of the Banco Guayana.

How do you rate freedom of press and of expression in Venezuela?

At present, freedom of expression in Venezuela is much reduced. There are very few independent media

and practically what exists in Venezuela is a communicational oligopoly where the media is divided

between members of the official political party and the opposition, with the major disadvantage that

there are more media in the hands of the government than those in private hands. It is becoming

increasingly more difficult to express oneself in Venezuela. There are hardly any media left where

citizens can express themselves freely and there are so few media where the journalists can express

their ideas with total freedom.

Plurality Lost in Anzóategui

In its 25th anniversary, Barcelona's newspaper “El Norte” fell into the hands of an economic

group close to local overlords of the PSUV, consolidating the government's communication hegemony in

that region of eastern Venezuela

By January 2014 Barcelona's (capital of Anzoátegui state, northeastern coast of the country)

newspaper El Norte had serious financial problems. Approximately 60 % of the reporters were either

interns or recent graduates, who would agree to any salary in exchange for increasing their work

experience. Fernando Martinez, its executive editor for over seven years, is well aware of the impact this

has on the quality of journalistic works. Plus, Umberto Petricca, its owner‒builder, the majority

shareholder of the Universidad Santa María (USM), and one of country's major contractors‒seemed no

longer interested in the newspaper or in the media‒he was the owner of the UHF signals of the regional

television network CMT, which he eventually sold to the State in order to use them for TeleSur, another

television network.

The outcome was a foregone conclusion: in late October 2014 the newspaper was sold for an

unknown amount.

The newspaper was left in the hands of the Urban Fermin group, a conglomeration of marketing

and distribution companies of transport, wood and steel, and construction companies close to the

provincial government of Anzoátegui‒now under the control of Aristóbulus Istúriz, former president of

the National Assembly and former minister of Hugo Chavez‒, and to the mayor's offices of the pro-

government United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Its owner is Carlos Eduardo Urbano Fermin, who has not had his name as the authority of the

paper printed on its pages though. Exceptionally, just days after the sale-purchase transaction of the

newspaper, he had an obituary published on his behalf following the death of the father of the mayor of

the municipality Pedro Maria Freites (corresponding to Cantaura), Daniel Haro, last October 28th.

Among the flood of condolences expressed, there were also notifications signed by the governor of the

state, the Legislative Council and the PSUV.

Despite of the new editor ties to the political powers of the State, the editor Fernando Martínez

does not appear to be concerned about the direction taken by the editorial line. That is because of a

very simple reason and that does not necessarily have to do with the virtues of the media: the presence

of the opposition in the region is almost zero, which means that all major political positions that at the

same time are sources of information and generators of news, are in the hands of those close to the

governing party. Therefore, the chavismo occupies, by fair means, most of the pages.

That was already the case when the newspaper was under the management of Umberto

Petricca, by the way.

“So far I have not received any order and that is not a concern to us,” said Martinez.

According to the 844-89 file found at First Mercantile Registry of Anzoátegui state, the

newspaper El Norte was founded in 1989 with a capital of 800,000 bolivars. Manuel Felipe Lander

Planchart appeared then as holder of 400 shares.

On July 15, 1996, Pascual Martínez Cirigliano, a strongman of TVO (a television network),

controlled the company through an investment firm, Inversiones P.C A.C. Somewhat later but in that

same year, the company Black Russian Corporación Publicitaria Oriente C.A buys the newspaper. Its

representative is Russian Leonardo Silva, partner of Jesus Tomar González Moreno. In this way, a portion

of the company‒240 shares‒remained under the control of Cirigliano's Inversisiones P.C.

In 1997 Black Russian sells its shares to Carlos Ricardo Patiño , owner and representative of the

commercial company Easter Inversiones C.A. Simultaneously, Cirigliano sells his share to Prensa

Oriental, owned by him.

The most recent registered capital of the company in 2004, when it was acquired by Petricca,

was just over 18 and a half million bolivars (about four million dollars to the official exchange rate valid

at that time), when it was.

The Minister Calls At Least Three Times

The passing of Hugo Chavez in March 2014 marked the beginning of a 21-month cycle in which

the government of his successor ,Nicolás Maduro, encouraged new ways to control the press that went

from the classic call from the presidential palace to the direct purchase of media.

The editorial departments of at least three print media in Caracas received direct calls from the

then Minister of Communications and Information, Ernesto Villegas. Just the day before, the Vice

President‒In charge of the presidency‒, Nicolás Maduro, had announced on television the death of the

leader of the self-proclaimed Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, after three months of an agony that

lacked transparency from The Havana and the Military Hospital of Caracas.

Villegas was trying to warn the people on the other end of the line, all of them editors and heads

of news media, about the consequences their news coverage could have, at a time when the

combination of the frustration of Chávez's supporters and the uncertainty that had flooded the country

seemed to be flammable material.

As the nation held its breath since four in the afternoon on March 4th, 2013, the official date of

Chávez's death, the government warned the media with something that sounded like: "Careful of what

you might say."

The end of political and vital parable of Hugo Chávez coincided with the start of a series of

changes for the exercise of journalism in Venezuela. Twenty one months in which the censorship and

the silencing the independent press intensified.

The features

On the night of March 5th ‒little more than 24 hours after the announcement of the of the

President's death‒ the then senior management of Globovisión reported that the television network

had received the governmental mandate to be “mindful” of the news related to the event. The order,

they said, was insistent. The network registered at least seven calls from Villegas, “in an intimidating

tone”, according to Maria Fernanda Flores, vice president of that network. The minister told them that if

any "civil disobedience" act took place in the country, the directors of this media would be the main

culprits.

To a TV channel that maintained a critical editorial line towards the management of Hugo

Chavez, this was not just any warning. Between 2002 and 2013 Globovisión accumulated 13

investigations and sanctions made by the Venezuelan state. It was a television plant that was constantly

criticized by the Government.

Also aiming at controlling the versions on the revolutionary leader's death, the then Minister of

Foreign Affairs, Elías Jaua‒now Minister for the Communes‒two days later urged the media, trough the

signal of the main state-owned TV station, to “handle carefully” the information about the death of

Chávez and “not to prompt destabilization”: “This is not the time to echo political analyses that could

constitute a provocation for our mourning people”, he determined in a barely undisclosed but not

totally direct threat.

The edges

Since then, these state exhortations, which were very open and borderline censorship, were so

constant, that they highlighted some topics that journalism could not address to avoid causing problems

with the government. A lot of the media felt reduced to choosing between silence and felt euphemism.

This is supported by the data of the Study: Censorship and Self-censorship, presented by the

Venezuelan Press and Society Institute (IPYS Venezuela) in October 2014. 38% of the 225 journalists

consulted reported limitations to their right to inform after direct threats of the national government.

The quantitative study, which encompassed the perceptions of journalists working in private,

state-owned, community-based and independent media in the 13 principal states of Venezuela, also

revealed the existence of official orders that affect the informative work, as stated by the affirmative

answers of 42% of the people consulted.

These pressures entailed modifications of information products they have been working on.

These measures often obeyed the pressures exerted by the executive branch of power‒through its

various instances‒.This entity was pointed out as the biggest censor by 34% of the people consulted.

“These orders evidently affect freedom of information, breaching the warranties journalists and

editors must have to conduct their news valuation and hierarchization process.” stated IPYS Venezuela.

These coercive actions that have become natural “have transformed Venezuela in a

misinformed society, where the lack of information transparency prevails and the autonomy of its

institutions is compromised, even those that scrutinize power,” said Marianela Balbi, executive director

of this organization.

The pattern

The 21 months after the death of Hugo Chavez were marked by the change of ownership of

some media, both in Caracas‒some with a national coverage‒and in the interior of the country.

These changes of shareholders and the editorial changes‒that have also occurred in different

regions of the country‒were amongst the main concerns identified by Venezuelan journalists. This was

demonstrated by the perception of 20% of the journalists consulted in the study of censorship.

This fact also shows the construction of a pattern: sales accompanied rumors and lack of

information transparency. “It can thus be inferred that this situation mentions transactions which have

not been duly informed to the journalists and neither to the common citizens.” determined the study.

The changes of hands

Six days after the death of Hugo Chávez, Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Globovisión, confirmed

the sale of the only Venezuelan network that dedicated 24 hours of programming to news and opinion

analyses.

This TV channel ranked amongst the players that marked the political polarization of the

country, since it did not hide its sympathies for the political opposition. Without blushing, Zuloaga

admitted, in an open letter directed to the plant's workers, that the network had put all its money in

making sure that Henrique Capriles won the presidential elections, in which he faced Hugo Chávez, on

October 7, 2012. “In Globovisión we did it extremely well and we almost succeed, but the opposition

lost” he confessed.

The sale of Globovisión was finalized without apparent drawbacks. The media continued to

operate in the same space granted by the National Telecommunications Commission, even though

Article 17 of the Organic Law on Telecommunications provides untransferable licenses. There was some

major turbulence in the staff, causing some of its most familiar faces to leave.

Changes continued. Three months later, on June 3rd, Miguel Ángel Capriles, president of the

Cadena Capriles , called his workers to a meeting in the editorial department . The reason was to

confirm the purchase of the company by new shareholders who would come to handle the newspapers

Últimas Noticias, Líder en Deportes and El Mundo, Economía y Negocios. Until then this was the largest

media corporation of the country.

The inhibitions

The censorship in the Cadena Capriles began to be felt in the newspaper El Mundo‒which

specializes in economic topics‒when its director Omar Lugo was fired, in November 2013, after he

refused to comply with the order that they wanted to impose on him with the purpose of “softening”

the editorial line. Censorship alarms went off due to the headline “Reduction! BCV using its reserves.”

That headline was the result of an article that showed a decline in the international reserves of

Venezuela, supported by official figures issued by the Central Bank.

This order toning down the information, which cost the job of Omar Lugo, came a week after

the President Nicolás Maduro declared that the media was responsible for the “economic war” that

existed in Venezuela.

Lugo's case was no exception in these circumstances of censorship. At least 39 % of those

consulted in IPYS' study said they received express orders to change the content drafted.

“Beyond respecting linguistic and ethical standards, these impositions can represent changes in

meaning, which could soften or modify concepts shared by society, so as not to disturb the forces of

power,” stated IPYS in its study.

That was evident in situations where orders of silence prevailed. On February 13th, 2014, 96

workers of the Cadena Capriles condemned the modification of main headline that appeared in the

newspaper Últimas Noticias. Back then, the front page of the tabloid favored the official version: “We

face a coup.” In this way, the result of the February 12th protests that occurred in Caracas was minimized

when three people died amidst demonstrations, because of the procedures carried out by the State

security forces.

Such situations became widespread. In Study of Censorship, journalists indicated that 43% of

them received guidelines, from media companies and governmental forces, prohibiting the coverage of

some affairs of public interest on specific topics.

February 12th, 2014 marked the beginning of three intense months of demonstrations and

conflicts that disrupted the country's agenda and left a toll of 43 people dead, 873 wounded, and 3210

investigated, according to the information provided by the Public Ministry.

In those days of demonstrations, as decided by the director of Últimas Noticias, the article

“What's behind the guarimbas,” in which the journalist Laura Weffer presented a chronicle of the

demonstrations at Altamira square and how groups that were leading them were organized, was

censored. This triggered the resignation of the head of the Centralized Research Unit (UCI for its

acronym in Spanish), Tamoa Calzadilla, and the progressive subsequent departure of all team members.

A similar incident had already happened in Globovisión. Immediately after the sale of the TV

channel, a strategy aimed at prohibiting topics and spaces for opinion and community complaints

started. Journalists consulted by IPYS Venezuela said there was a list of people who could not be invited

to their programs because the new management had “vetoed” them. Long stories began to be restricted

until they dismantled the Research Unit, which produced contents that came out every Sunday.

In Caracas, this practice of property change and lack of transparency was repeated 16 months

after the passing of Hugo Chavez. On July 4th, 2014, the newspaper El Universal announced the purchase

of this newspaper by new shareholders. Although the board assured that the conditions for the exercise

of journalism would be maintained, in the following months IPYS Venezuela registered cases of internal

censorship that affected reporters and columnists. Its digital television initiative of this media outlet,

called EUTV, and its transmissions were broadcast through a portal linked to this media company.

The censorship also affected Rayma Suprani, cartoonist in El Universal. Her dismissal came in

August 2014, following a cartoon, in which the signature of the deceased Hugo Chávez was linked to the

deplorable state of public health in Venezuela.

Lack of information transparency

Between 2013 and 2014, health was an issue that lacked transparency in Venezuela. The

epidemiological bulletin of the Ministry of Health did not report the cases of people with Chikungunya

fever, a fever with African origins that has become an epidemic in the country over the past eight

months. In response to the alert reports issued by the physicians, the government threatened to ban the

tackling of these issues.

The same happened with the outbreak of H1N1 influenza between May and June 2013. After

the Health Minister, Isabel Iturria, said in a television interview that statistics on this virus were not

important, eleven journalists from different regions reported to IPYS Venezuela that the regional health

offices restricted official information, especially the statistics of deaths due to this disease.

These restrictions did not surprise anyone in a country where the same official information on

the health of the, ultimately, late President Hugo Chavez was obscure and intermittent.

The limitations to access public information have alarmed journalism. The journalists consulted

by IPYS Venezuela to study censorship noted that this is one of the principal “obstacles they face, at

present, when working as journalists.”

In addition, the lack of information transparency is perceived as “a constant practice in state

institutions, which deny information, according to the opinion of 79% of the persons consulted. This

means that 178 of 225 journalists and media employees participating in the survey had been prevented

access to public information by state entities. This same situation persists in private institutions,

according to 32% of the opinions collected, and 11% talked about the same situation in independent

institutions.”

“The greater the lack of information transparency, the greater the risks and deviations in

society, as a result of complicities and corruption,” stated IPYS Venezuela, organization that at the same

time identified that “The lack of information transparency on information of public interest is a

censorship mechanism, because the interest in keeping data hidden from the collective who should

know about it becomes an order and is institutionalized, to the point that it becomes natural.”

Self-censorship

The pressures and coercive measures that affect journalism produce “a scenario that fosters

self-censorship, in which journalists and media employees cave in to orders and intimidation,” stated

the report of IPYS Venezuela.

In the study carried out by this organization, 29% of the journalists admitted to have censored

themselves.

“In a democratic society, the phenomenon of self-censorship is a symptom to be tackled, since it

is an indicator of excessive controls and permanent gag orders. This is the most advanced level in which

censorship operates. A range in which fear and the will not to inform is not perceived, because the

decision to decline information functions is taken as the most logical and natural decision. Inhibition

then becomes a habit, and thus gradually blurs the role of journalist as a voice of denunciation and actor

whose nature is to scrutinize power,” observed IPYS Venezuela.