In a column in the Buenos Aires Herald, Robert Cox worries over the treatment of journalists visiting Venzuela and what it might foreshadow:
The harassment in Venezuela of Jorge Lanata, the journalist who has become an unofficial leader of the political opposition to the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is more significant than it might seem at first sight.
Lanata, who was travelling with a camera crew to cover the presidential elections for the Clarín Group, was detained for questioning by state intelligence agents both going into and out of Caracas. The procedures used to harass him and his colleagues are familiar...
.....
... Lanata, José Gil Vidal and Nicolás Wiñazki, of Clarín, and Gabriel Conte, editor of MDZOL, a digital newspaper in Mendoza, were given special attention by secret police who erased their reportage from their electronic equipment, alleging espionage, a charge that was not followed up.The significance of this quasi-totalitarian attempt to restrict freedom of information by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service is that it is an indication of what could happen in Argentina if President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner should decide to imitate her friend President Hugo Chávez by trying to silence dissident voices and establish state control of the media.
The rest is here. (Thanks: CT.)