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Press group cites Venezuelan 'pressure'
MIAMI
Petroleumworld.com 10 15 07
A group representing news media from across the Americas accused the Venezuelan government Saturday of pressuring hotels not to host the organization's annual meeting next year — an allegation officials in the South American country quickly dismissed.On the second day of its 63rd annual conference, the Inter American Press Association complained that a number of hotels in several Venezuelan cities rejected reservations for the the group's semi-annual assembly in March 2008, saying they had no vacancies for that time of year.
But leaders of the group, which reviews the state of the media in the Western Hemisphere and promotes free expression, also said they will go ahead with plans to meet in Venezuela next March.
"It worries us that we perceive official pressure," said Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the organization's press freedom committee. "This has not happened in any other country and demonstrates pressures and corporate self-censorship."
Venezuela Information Minister Willian Lara called the allegation a "new aggression" by the press group and denied his government had pressured any hotel chain to reject it.
He said the members of the press association — "capitalists of the press" — censor news contrary to their interests and "have converted their newspapers, radio and television stations and Internet sites into propaganda machines to oppose Bolivarian democracy with the systematic use of defamatory lies."
The Miami-based press association has criticized President Hugo Chavez's socialist government for what it calls efforts to limit press freedoms, including his decision in May not to renew the license of a TV station critical of his administration. The IAPA planned to award its Grand Prize for Press Freedom to the president of the station, which is now broadcasting on cable.
Associated Press writer Laura Wides-Munoz contributed to this report.
Story by Gisela Salmon from AP 15 10 07
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