Chavez widens crackdown on media

Pedestrians take cover under a hot dog stand in Caracas on Monday during protests against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's decision to shut down opposition-aligned TV station Radio Caracas Television. PHOTO: AP

President Hugo Chavez's clampdown on Venezuela's opposition TV stations widened on Monday as police used rubber bullets and tear gas on demonstrators protesting what they called an attack on free speech.

Venezuela levied charges against US cable network CNN for linking Chavez to the al-Qaeda terror network headed by Osama bin Laden. The move came just hours after having shut down the country's oldest TV station, the openly anti-government Radio Caracas Television network.

The government also accused Venezuelan TV network Globovision of encouraging the president's assassination.

Information Minister William Lara showed at a news conference what he said was CNN footage displaying pictures of Chavez juxtaposed with those of an al-Qaeda leader.

"CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder," Lara said.

In addition, CNN aired a story about the Venezuelan protests using images taken in Mexico of an unrelated story, Lara said.

CNN issued a statement late on Monday saying they "strongly deny" being "engaged in a campaign to discredit or attack Venezuela."

The network acknowledged a video mix-up, and "aired a detailed correction and expressed regret for the involuntary error."

Regarding the al-Qaeda leader, the network said that "unrelated news stories can be juxtaposed in a given program segment just as a newspaper page or a news Web site may have unconnected stories adjacent to each other."

The Venezuelan government also filed charges against local network Globovision for what they said was indirectly encouraging Chavez's murder by airing footage of the 1981 assassination attempt on the late pope John Paul II.

"In my view, this television network, in this specific part of its programming, committed the offense of incitement to assassination, against the Venezuelan head of state," Lara said.

The charges came amid protests against Chavez's shutdown of RCTV, a privately-owned broadcaster of popular comedy and drama shows that was boldly critical of Chavez.

After 54 years on the air, RCTV went off the air at midnight on Sunday after the government refused to renew its license. It was promptly replaced by TVes, a state-backed station which began broadcasting cultural shows.

On Monday several people were injured as police in Caracas fired rubber bullets and tear gas to put down a demonstration against the RCTV shutdown, following the fifth straight day of protests.

A policeman's leg was broken in the fracas, a police official said.

Protests continued through the day Monday in Caracas and other cities after the government refused to renew RCTV's license.

One of the country's leading dailies, El Nacional, denounced it as "end of pluralism in Venezuela," and slammed the government's growing "information monopoly."

Meanwhile, the archbishop of Merida, Baltasar Porras Cardoso, compared Chavez to Adolf Hitler, Beneito Mussolini and Cuban President Fidel Castro.

In an interview with state-owned VTV, however, Interior Minister Pedro Carreno accused the opposition of mounting a plot against the government, devised by "the empire," a term often used to describe the US.

He also accused demonstrators of trying "to develop a plan for violence in the country," and added: "The government also has its plan. And it is working."