* Minister of Communication and Information William Lara said the Venezuelan government is to file lawsuits against any media treating the case of private TV network Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) as closure instead of the end of a broadcast license.

* "No media are being closed in Venezuela. This is a lie. Tell the truth!" Lara told foreign correspondents in Caracas on coverage of the event.

* Lara said that Venezuelan news channel Globovisión and US CNN en Español are the channels subject to the claim, AFP reported.

* Minister Lara showed two video footages, one broadcast by CNN where a reporter depicts alleged protests on the World Press Freedom Day in Venezuela rejecting the end of the broadcast license for RCTV, while the images actually showed a demonstration in Cancun, Mexico, against the killing of a reporter in this town. In the second video, about a TV show on local news TV station Globovisión, there appear images of the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II, with Rubén Blades’ song “Esto no termina aquí” (This does not end here).

* María Alejandra Díaz, director general of the Social Responsibility and Independent National Production Division, Ministry of Communications and Information (Minci), on May 27 warned Venezuelan private television channels "not to echo" the "calls" allegedly made by the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).

* She called “very serious” IAPA’s claims, and added that the organization was “making statements in connection with a country’s domestic policy and calling to disregard this country’s legislation by branding the government as authoritarian and tyrannical.”

* "I am calling upon service providers not to echo this kind of calls, as social responsibility exists, and regardless of the fact that you do not make the statements, you are broadcasting the opinions of a third party. If you do not say, 'Watch out, this is a call to commit a crime,' then you are not acting responsibly."