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Since 2002 the Human Rights Center undertakes the freedom of speech and information as an area of research. In this context, research works have been carried on for specific aspects of Venezuelan crisis and its relation to the dimensions of this right, as well as seminars in this area. The most recent work is “The media at the center of the strike” which analyses the events from April 2002 to January 2013 and the role played by the information aspect in that context. A work on the crisis of April 2002 was already presented by Andres Cañizalez associated researcher of the Human Rights Center under the title of “From thunder to silence, the April crisis and the freedom of speech and information.”
The situation lived on those days is not exclusive for Venezuela. The Ecuadorian sociologist Gabriela Cordova developed her thesis for the Masters’ Diploma in Latin American Studies specialized on Communication from the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar on the topic of “Media and political crisis: the Ecuadorian case.” We presented a review that confronts us with shocking and disturbing parallelisms between both countries. We are confident that these works will contribute to the needed academic, administrative and professional reflection on the role and responsibility of public and private media play in times of political crisis.
