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Government hits TV station
with fine called unpayable

By the A.M. Venezuela staff
and a special report

The Venezuelan government has hit the independent television station Globovision with a stiff fine for reporting the news.

The vice president of Globovisión, María Fernanda Flores, revealed the new attack on the television station, and the situation got a quick response at meeting of the  Inter American Press Association in Lima, Perú.

The president of the Inter American Press Association, Gonzalo Marroquín, condemned the sanction, which consisting of a fine of 7.5 percent of its gross revenues in 2010, for reporting on the take-over of the El Rodeo prison last June.

Marroquín said that “the sanction is part of a government strategy to close the Globovisión channel under cover of legality.” He added that it is a matter of “a new act of aggression against the independent press of Venezuela, which unmasks the attitude that the government has always held against freedom of the press.”

“We are facing a mechanism of apparent legality and legitimacy, but which in fact has nothing legal about it;  it is a dictatorial measure,” said Marroquín, of the newspaper Siglo 21 in Guatemala.

The facts became known to the press group moments after the end of the working sessions of the 67th General Assembly of the institution in which reports and resolutions were approved about freedom of the press in each country of the American hemisphere.

In statements made over the Venezuelan channel, the Vice President of Globovisión, María Fernanda Flores, said that the fine assessed by the Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones “is unpayable and means the bankruptcy of the station.” According to other sources, the fine would amount to around $2 million.

The sanction has to do with the dissemination of news by Globovisión of the take-over of the prison and statements made during the events by family members, who were considered to have brought about the disturbance of public order. The sanction is based on the law on Social Responsibility on Radio and Television.

Posted Oct. 18, 2011





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