Journalists Under Fire: Chronicles of Repression in Maduro's Venezuela (2024-2025)

Venezuela's July 28, 2024 presidential election was supposed to be the country's turning point. Instead, it became the signal for the most ferocious assault on the press in its modern history. In the months that followed, Nicolás Maduro's regime jailed journalists, shuttered radio stations, blocked social networks and news websites by the dozens, and forced reporters into hiding, exile, or silence.

Journalists Under Fire

is the definitive, day-by-day chronicle of that repression. Drawing on documented reports from IPYS-Venezuela, Espacio Público, PROVEA, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Fact-Finding Mission, and Venezuela's embattled independent press, veteran journalist Eladio Rodulfo González assembles a case-by-case record of what happened to freedom of expression in Venezuela in 2024 and 2025. Every entry is dated, sourced, and named - from the ten-day ban on X that never ended and the blocking of 79 websites and servers, to the 20 radio stations taken off the air and the reporters charged with "terrorism" and "incitement to hatred" for simply doing their jobs.

Inside, you will find:

• The complete chronology of the post-election crackdown, from July 28, 2024, to June 2025

• Detailed case files on the journalists arrested, disappeared, or forced into exile - among them Ana Carolina Guaita, Roland Carreño, Rory Branker, Nakary Mena, Julio Balza, and Leandro Palmar

• The mechanics of the digital blackout: DNS blocks, VPN shutdowns, platform bans, and the "VenApp" denunciation application

• The repressive legal architecture - the NGO Law and the Libertador Law - and the UN's finding that political persecution in Venezuela constitutes crimes against humanity

• First-hand reporting from Venezuelan media operating under siege

This is the book for journalists, human-rights defenders, researchers, and every reader who wants to understand how a government silences the truth - and what it costs the people who tell it. If you care about press freedom anywhere, read what happened in Venezuela when the press became the story.