Furtive Press as the Last Defense of News Freedom

Venezuelan case

Furtive Press as the Last Defense of News Freedom

Enrique Castejon-Lara

Abstract

The increasingly worldwide press restrictions by intolerant regimes —including those called “democratic”— are forcing journalist to use social media as new report trenches, but using prudently semantic writing strategies to evade political and illegal reprisals. That is the specific case of reporters in Venezuela.

When a government rules out constitution and laws, and does not respect citizen rights, journalistic mass media have the moral obligation of acting against it. That is the main principle stablished by Press Social Responsibility Theory (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm, 1984). But, many times, as in the case of Venezuela, journalists do not have the possibility to accomplish efficiently that ethic command, because their lives are on risk and the media’s owners have been menaced by the regime. Usually, the unconstitutional governments, like that one in Venezuela, not only manipulate law and justice institutions, but also control printing paper, ink supplies, and broadcast frequencies. So, the “combat sceneries” for contemporary newsmen are really “asymmetric”, and deeply difficult.

That is the reason why Venezuelan reporters are increasingly using social media as alternative means for reporting true facts. At this moment, in that country, those online resources are their trenches against censorship and political reprisals. However, they even so are exposed to government officers’ aggression. In the last three years, many domestic journalists have been jailed without previous arrest warrant, and, in some occasions, their passports have been “confiscated” when traveling out the country. Similar things have been happened to some international reporters, especially those working for news agencies like Reuter, AFP, and EFE, and television networks like CNN and NTN24. Some of them have suffered Venezuelan government aggressions and censorship.

In that sense, social media are not effective enough for Venezuelan reporters, and, of course, for Venezuelan people. The arbitrary acts of the government are invaded those “freedom spaces” where citizens hope find the truth of what is really happening in their country. A regimen “mercenary army” of false users (bots) of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other social media are virtually flooding them with fake news and psychological messages to undermine people hope to demoralize them. However, not all is good for the regime. Fortunately for freedom, opposition and so active people on line are helping journalists to spread the truth. In that case, the government strategies are not obtaining the results they want. Maybe, the Venezuelan regimen never expected a persistent and huge amount of spontaneous citizen reporters acting together to unveil their traps and propaganda.

That is today situation of press in Venezuela. Newsmen are trying to disclose true information from social media trenches, but using alternative writing methods including semantic strategies to evade regimen reprisals. They, now, are practicing a new way to report, a kind of “guerrilla” journalism that can be named “furtive press”.

Sources:

CASTEJON LARA, Enrique. Interpretative reporting. CreativeSpace (Amazon), 2015.

SIEBERT, Fred S.; PETERSON, Theodore, and SCHRAMM, Wilbur. Concepts of what the press should be and do. University of Illinois Press, 1984.