Ladder
Ladder: licensing and closure of outlets, in South America
A government requires newspapers, broadcasters or news websites to register or to hold a licence, and uses that power to refuse, suspend or cancel it, or to close the outlet. Broadcast licences, which governments issue because radio and television frequencies are limited, are a common lever.
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
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2Pressure
Using state power short of prosecution to change coverage: regulatory threats, licence reviews, funding cuts, lawsuits by officials, official "fake news" or "foreign agent" labels, advertising pressure, tax audits.
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
President Getúlio Vargas created the Department of Press and state messaging in 1939 during Brazil's Estado Novo dictatorship, giving the government direct control over what newspapers, radio and film could publish.
Reversed 1 January 1945 · 2 sources · Full entry
La Prensa, one of Argentina's leading newspapers and a longtime critic of President Juan Perón's government, was expropriated by the state earlier in 1951.
Sustained 1 October 1951 · 3 sources · Full entry
Venezuela's government let Radio Caracas Television's twenty-year broadcast concession expire rather than renew it, replacing the country's most-watched channel with a new state broadcaster; a regional human rights court later found the decision violated free expression.
Note: The country's most-watched television channel lost its national broadcast concession entirely, later found by an international court to have been aimed at ending its critical coverage.
Sustained 8 September 2015 · 3 sources · Full entry
President Javier Milei's government fenced off and shut down Telam, Argentina's state-owned news agency, calling it a public-relations operation for the prior Kirchnerist governments; unions and journalist groups called the closure one of the most serious blows to press freedom in decades of Argent…
Sustained · 1 source · Full entry
All ladders · Licensing and closure of outlets: by country and year · The United States chapter