In Venezuela: The silence of the media.

Venezuela is left without means of communication, because many have closed arbitrary measures by the government and others for lack of materials to get the daily press to the streets.

Almost three-quarters of Venezuela's newspapers have closed during the five-year recession of the once-rich oil nation, according to the national association of journalists, leaving El Nacional as the last independent national newspaper.

The press observatories warn that the freedom of the media decreased during the last year, when President Nicolás Maduro faced protests and set out to win a new six-year term in elections boycotted by the opposition last May. Venezuela fell 6 places in the world press freedom index and ranks 143 out of the 180 countries reported.

Social communications face daily arbitrary arrests, the expulsion of foreign reporters and several defamation prosecutions.

According to the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad Venezuela (IPYS), the national telecommunications regulator also closed 40 radio stations in 2017, citing irregularities in their licenses.

The closures have increasingly left the coverage in the hands of the state-controlled media that dominate radio and television, covering Maduro's official activities while avoiding problems such as increasing levels of malnutrition and diseases.

Nicolas Maduro referred to the media contrary to his mandate as follows: "What is left, the rubble (...) of the bourgeois media."

Under state pressure, private television channels limited live coverage of widespread protests against the government last year.

The National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel), the telecommunications regulator, said in May it would investigate El Nacional's website for "spreading messages that ignore the legitimately constituted authorities and incite and promote hatred."

What diminishes the freedom of expression that is lost in Venezuela.

@chanchuy