The Pitfalls and Perils of Being a Digital Journalist in Venezuela

Abstract

To be a journalist in Venezuela is very dangerous. In the past decade, there has been an increase of attacks against media and their personnel. On the one hand, attacks against journalists include harassment (physical, digital, legal), illegal detentions, kidnapping, and assassination. On the other hand, digital media have experienced blockages (DNS), internet shutdowns and slow-downs, failures in the connection, and restrictions to access internet-based platforms and content. Since 2014, the situation is deteriorating and limitations to exercise the right to freedom of expression have increased. However, this issue remains understudied; hence, this chapter considers primary and secondary data to analyze the types of limitations experienced by Venezuelan digital journalists from 2014 to 2018, explains the effects of ambiguous regulations and the use of problematic interpretations, and describes the inadequacies of national policies to promote freedom of the press.

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“…It is not just indigenous journalists who suffer from violence in Latin America. While UNESCO and the Committee to Protect Journalists do not consider Venezuela one of the most dangerous countries in the world to exercise journalism, international organisations such as Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights have constantly denounced limitations on journalists there, which, among other things, include harassment, illegal detention, kidnapping and assassination (Garrido, 2020). In Colombia, decades of murder, aggression, threats, and general pressure have engendered rhetorical survival strategies such as self-censorship, resulting in stilted discourse (Barredo, de la Garza, & Díaz-Cerveró, 2016).…”