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Before last week's student protests, President Maduro pledged to purge a 'culture of violence' from the media.

David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog:Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.The views expressed are the author's own.

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[Yesterday's] protest and speech by Leopoldo Lpez was covered live by television news channel Globovisin. At least in part. Globovisin split their screen so that they could transmit the opposition protest and government march at the same time and also cut away from the speech before Lpez was done.

This, however, was a significant improvement over media coverage of the violence during the Feb.12 march (see Davids comments in the Financial Times).

That day when the students protests turned increasingly violent, private televisionstations stopped their live coverage of the incidents. Globovisin, the news channel that used to be considered the main pro-opposition media but is now owned by a business group said to be close to the government, had initially given ample but not live coverage to the protests. But as soon as violence erupted in the afternoon, they switched to a fashion program.

Public television channels did not cover any of the opposition protests, concentrating instead on a government organized patriotic youth march commemorating the anniversary of La Victoria battle of the war of independence.

People with access to cable television services turned to the Colombia-based news channel NTN24 for live coverage of the incidents. As violence erupted, the channel broadcasted videos reportedly filmed by protestors showing Venezuelan police officers firing on protestors. The government ordered cable providers to take NTN24 out of their grids. Viewers reported by twitter that by leaving the channel on it could still be viewed in Venezuela, but as soon as it was changed or the cable set turned off and on again, the image was lost. The web page of the channel was also blocked from access in Venezuela. But it was available live on Youtube.com.

President Nicols Maduro justified the censuring measure declaring: a television channel [NTN24] that is trying to compete with Telesur [Venezuelan government backed Latin American news televisionchannel], attempted to broadcast the chaos of a coup dtatI had to defend Venezuelas peace. He also scolded Agence France-Presse news service for using local reporters to harm the truth about Venezuela.

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How are Venezuela's media covering the protests?