Honduras: Post Coup Censorship

Media in Honduras Call for "Normalcy" After Coup
<http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/4459>

The country's two leading radio networks, Radio América and Radio HRN,
opponents of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, called on Hondurans early Monday
to resume their normal activities and not to follow citizen organizations that
are pushing to restore Zelaya to office, Italy's ANSA news agency reports from
Tegucigalpa. (See latest news here.)

TV stations are not broadcasting news, and international networks such as CNN
and Telesur were blacked out, the agency says. The radio stations have not
condemned restrictions on press freedom, nor the fact that only official
information was being broadcast, ANSA says. Nor has the national human rights
commissioner condemned violations of Hondurans' right to information, the
agency says.

The Sunday morning coup in Honduras shocked President Manuel Zelaya, who was
still in his pajamas while giving a news conference in Costa Rica.

Amid the confusion, a crowd outside the Presidential Palace attacked a
photographer for El Heraldo newspaper, the newspaper reports. (See other
photos here.)

News organizations sympathetic to Zelaya (an ally of Hugo Chávez), such as
Venezuela's official news agency and Cuba's Granma published a statement by
the Latin American Journalists Federation (FELAP), supporting journalists who
were seeking to report the truth. The statement condemned those media that
supported the "oligarchic forces" and the military that ousted Zelaya.

While many international news organizations compiled their first reports from
Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, and other countries, Argentine
journalist Gonzalo Verge, who lives in Tegucigalpa, found himself in the right
place at the right time, with a birds-eye view of the action.

In a report for MDZ Online Verge said he awoke Sunday to the sound of
helicopters and sirens. From his apartment overlooking the Government Palace,
he saw troops surrounding the perimeter and "tanks that drove by like autos."

Switching on the radio and TV, he learned of Zelaya's arrest, but minutes
later, all broadcasts were cut. Using a laptop and cellphone to access the
Internet and the mass media, "all were giving different, contradictory
information," contributing to a general disorder."