redmenace: I never said Chavez is perfect, but very few countries have a flawlessly free press. If any sort of widespread crackdown was planned, or was happening, or had happened, it would be more than a single marginal newspaper or libel lawsuits (which exist and are frequently abused throughout the world) against a few journalists.
As for Chavez being paranoid, consider that America has a long history of either invading Latin American countries with "undesireable" governments, or sponsoring coups. If there's a serial killer going around your neighborhood taking out people with blonde hair, and you have blonde hair, it's perfectly reasonable to feel suspicious. Aside from the 2002 coup, I think that if Uncle Sam was not so busy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia, something would already have been done to "take care" of Chavez. That is fo course conjecture, but I think that anyone inhis position, knowing what he knows and seeing the simple patterns in history, would be justified in feeling very worried.
Anyway, compare the US media, which is usually very compliant to the government's demands, to the point of being somewhat a subordinate, and Venezuela's media, and then ask yourself if Chavez had as his goal the silencing of opposing views wouldn't something have been done about the vast number of opposition media outlets? From what I know, and I've sort of been following goings-on in Venezeula for a few years, I don't think the media climate is any worse than in most of the world, certainly far from being a totalitarian dictatorship. For example, Berlusconi owned Italy's most powerful media conglomerate while serving as Prime Minister. If that sort of thing happened in Venezuela, people would be screaming "Stalin" within about two seconds.
I also question the impartiality of the Inter-American Press Association. Unfortunately, and quite strangely, they don't have a Wikipedia entry. I'm not going to condemn anyone based on lack of information, but I know that there is a certain portion of NGOs who have often served, to one degree or another, to broadcast and add legitimacy to the views of the US administration. For example Transparency International and Freedom House, both large and respected rights organizations, have at times slanted their reports to favour the current position of the US government, though certainly Freedom House has been the worse offender. Not all that glitters is gold.
