Press censorship in Venezuela

The El Nacional of Venezuela might have had it coming for spreading out in its Friday the 13th issue the  photo below of unclaimed cadavers ('muertos sin dignidad') in a Caracas morgue with a caption on the homicidal crime statistics for the first half of 2010.  The picture was reported to have been taken surreptitiously.

As a result, the 12th Tribunal of Caracas ordered the print  media on Tuesday, 17th August, to stop publishing information or pictures of violence.

The restriction on El Nacional is more severe:  no photos, information or advertising "content of blood, arms, messages of terror, physical aggressions, provocative images of war, messages about deaths (muertos y decesos) that may alter the psychological well-being of children and adolescents residing in Venezuela."

On the 18th, the newspaper in protest replaced two pictures with boxes marked CENSURADO (censored).  The top box caption reads: "If this had a picture, you would see a father crying for his son who no longer has [censored]."  According to reports, the event pages (paginas de sucesos) has been blanked out with a giant red CENSURADO printed on it, and the editor has gone on air denouncing the prohibition as unconstitutional and a violation of the freedom of expression.

Update: 19 August 2010.  Today's issue had the "O" of Nacional made up as a gagged Donald Duck look-alike, and spread out the results of the survey question "Do you think that the most important reason to feel insecure is the information supplied by the media?"

87.65% of those surveyed said "No."

Update: 27 August 2010:

Apt Front Pagers on Friday the 13th?

This morbid picture of abandoned cadavers in city morgue taken surreptitiously last December was the front page spread of the El Nacional of Venezuela on Friday the 13th.  "Muertos sin dignidad", it says, die without dignity, and then the statistics for the first six months of this year: 2,177 homicidal deaths, 362 per month, 12 per day, and one every two hours.  There may be worse records somewhere, so we're not shocked.  

Even for people who do not believe in superstitions associated with Friday the 13th, the picture is loathsome.  What more to others who dread the day and take extra precautions so as not to court the attention of the Grim Reaper?

An amusing counterpoint to the Venezuelan picture is this front pager of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the business(es) attendant to dying.  It revolves around the death of 22-year old Chase Shaw, a Cardinals fan who died in a car accident last December, and "laid to rest in a Cardinals jersey and hat, and a Cardinals bat and ball inside of a Cardinals casket, which was placed inside a burial vault adorned with the Cardinals logo."

Later in the story we found out that the casket was bought for $3,500 from a Michigan-based company called Eternal Image, which began selling caskets with major league baseball themes two years ago.  They also sell urns with major league logos for $799.

Would you believe that "the NCAA has allowed more than 200 colleges and universities to license their logo to casket manufacturers?"

Click on any of the hyper-linked phrases above to get to the details of the St Louis Post-Dispatch front page story.