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[regicide]

CARACAS, Venezuela - Television personalities embraced, wept and broke into chants of "freedom!" before the cameras Sunday as Venezuela's most widely watched channel prepared to go off the air at midnight under a decision by President Hugo Chavez that opponents called an assault on free speech.


Radio Caracas Television, the sole opposition-aligned TV station with nationwide reach, was being forced off the airwaves because Chavez refused to renew its broadcast license.

"We are living an injustice," said Eyla Adrian, a 35-year-old presenter, her eyes welling with tears. "I wish that tonight would never come."

Chavez said Saturday he was democratizing the airwaves by turning RCTV's signal over to a public service channel.

"That television station became a threat to the country so I decided not to renew the license because it's my responsibility," Chavez said.

RCTV's top executive, Marcel Granier, said on a morning talk show that Chavez's action "marks a turn toward totalitarianism."

Hundreds of protesters gathered at the station's headquarters to protest the shutdown.

"I want to live in a free country," said Elianna Castro, a 17-year-old student who hopes to be a journalist.

But red-clad government supporters gathered elsewhere to show support for the measure.

"RCTV was exclusionist; you never saw blacks or Indians on its screens, and its programming promoted violence," said Gerardo Sanchez, 52, a student in a state cultural program.

The socialist president and his supporters accuse RCTV of supporting a failed 2002 coup against him, violating broadcast laws and regularly showing programs with excessive violence and sexual content.

In 2002, RCTV and other private channels broadcast opposition calls for protests to overthrow Chavez, but they largely ignored coverage of his return to power amid protests by his supporters.

Andres Izarra, who now heads the state-financed channel Telesur, said he quit his job as a newsroom manager at RCTV in 2002 because of the way "everything was censored" during the coup.

"The order was 'zero Chavismo on the screen.' Nothing related to Chavez, his allies, his congressmen, members of his party," Izarra told The Associated Press in an interview. "When I hear the owners of RCTV talk about freedom of expression, it seems to me a great hypocrisy."

Most Venezuelan news media are in private hands, including many newspapers and radio stations that remain critical of Chavez.

But the only other major opposition-sided TV channel is Globovision, and it is not seen in all parts of the country.

The president of the Miami-based Inter American Press Association, which represents 1,400 publications, said Sunday he was "very worried that press freedom could perish completely" in Venezuela.

"The concession of radio electric frequencies should not serve to reward or punish media outlets for their editorial line," Rafael Molina told a news conference. He noted that less-critical stations were able to renew licenses that also expired Sunday.

Information Minister Willian Lara argued that RCTV was rejected because "it systematically violates the constitution. It is strictly a legal case."

[khyber]

I have/had no problems with chavez but shutting down the LAST major vehicle of desention <sp?> will lead for some rather sour tastes in the mouths of his supporters outside of venezuela

[Tony_Balony]

Chavez is a useless douche and unfortuanely he's the King of Latin America. A land of uselessness.