A few months ago, a 70s-leftist at Columbia Journalism Review, John Dinges, smugly assured us all was well with Venezuela’s press freedom and the only problem in that country was the ‘irresponsibility’ of the private media. For, you know, printing unfounded rumors and stuff. And not liking it (due to their being hopelessly middle class!) when the government Propaganda Minister read off their names publicly in his daily criticism lists. As if they were 4-year-olds. And as if there were no problem with that! In Dinges mind, that, and not anything Chavez did, was the problem! To hear it from him, the media were full of transgressions because they did not report the news with Marxist correctness as Dinges would have liked, and the government was the solution. Dinges took the Venezuelan government’s word for it, of course, getting real reaaaaal close to his sources like Andres Izarra and his creepy reporter-database-building dad, William Izarra, spending tons of time with them in Caracas, and explaining to the rest of us that Andres was a moral paragon and model journo, the very conscience of us all. That was the kind of lousy report he did!

Well it turns out the Venezuelan government’s assault on the independent press was all real. The attacks on free speech and free thought were 100% accurate. And as we knew would happen, the Stalinist censorship by Izarra’s pals has fully started. Bona fide censorship is here.

And all the world is silent!

Miguel has the outrage described here and Francisco, an ex-journalist, has extremely good items here and here.

Daniel in Venezuela has an additional excellent report here.

UPDATE: Alek Boyd has another good piece, new, here.