Hugo Chavez gets press award

Honoured in Argentina:

ARGENTINA: Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez was honored in Argentina Tuesday with a press award — raising eyebrows among some as he has been criticized for clamping down on the press at home. “I accept and dedicate this prize in the name of the people of your brother country, Venezuela, which has been fighting for years to shape dynamic peoples’ media, free of the media dictatorship of the upper class and the United States,” Chavez said at the National University of La Plata (UNLP), with a crowd of thousands looking on.

Chavez won the Rodolfo Walsh prize from the university’s journalism department. Walsh was a journalist who cofounded Cuba’s Prensa Latina agency, and went missing during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Florencia Saintout, the department’s dean, said the award was “in honour of Chavez’ long career and struggle for the identity of the peoples of the Americas.” Senator Norma Morandini, a former journalist, said the award was tantamount to “giving a prize for disdain for the press.”

In 2007 Chavez drew domestic and international outcry by shutting down the prominent opposition-owned RCTV television, the only anti-Government broadcast channel in the South American nation.

BUENOS AIRES, Wednesday, AFP