Google app tested in Venezuela takes swipe at press censors
119 views · Published 31 October 2018 · 5:01 · Indexed 26 September 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(26 Oct 2018) Google has unveiled a tool meant to help fight press censorship around the world, testing it first in Venezuela, where journalists say they're battling a government bent on burying online stories that expose corruption and human rights abuses. The Android-only app Intra is designed to bypass any blocks set up by local internet providers, making it harder for governments or other interlopers to deny access to certain websites. News junkies in Venezuela clicking on links to their favorite independent websites have increasingly been frustrated in recent years by messages on their screens saying the pages don't exist, thwarting a free-flow of information to millions of potential readers. "Our investigative journalism and reporting contains elements that, as we see it, put the government in very uncomfortable situations," said Cesar Batiz, news director of El Pitazo, a popular digital platform that he says has drawn the attention of censors for its biting coverage. A once wealthy oil nation, Venezuela is plummeting into a deepening political and economic crisis under two decades of socialist rule. Venezuelan journalists work under the threat of jail or crushing lawsuits, driving some abroad fearing for their personal safety. Jared Cohen, founder and CEO of Jigsaw, a unit of a Google, said his team created the app out of an ongoing conversation with journalists and tech-savvy Venezuelans over obstacles they confront disseminating their work. Intra launched worldwide on Oct. 3 after a test run over several months in Venezuela. Venezuela's communications ministry didn't respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press for this story. The government, however, controls the internet as owner of CANTV, the largest internet service provider with 2.5 million customers. Smaller, private providers follow its directives to stay in business, said Melanio Escobar, a Venezuelan journalist and social activist who quietly tested the app on Google's behalf before it was launched. While there's no direct evidence of government censorship, critics say that officials sporadically block access to certain news websites and others publishing information about the underground money exchange system by directing searches to blank screens. The Press and Society Institute of Venezuela, a press freedom group, says that since 2014 news websites critical of the government have been increasingly targeted. Since Intra's launch, it has been downloaded 130,000 times worldwide, a growing figure developers consider a success, according to Jigsaw. Venezuela is among the top three countries but Jigsaw declined to name the others. In a cat-and-mouse fight, El Pitazo's Batiz said he first tried throwing off his online enemies by switching up domains for elpitazo.com, using instead elpitazo.info and even elpitazo.ml, an internet code for the African country of Mali. The website took a big hit, however, in September 2017 following a report accusing socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello of using his cousins as fronts for illicit business. The website's 70,000 daily page visits plummeted the next day to 11,000, Batiz said. El Pitazo now urges readers to download the new app with Twitter links of its stories, or through WhatsApp audio messages, struggling to rebuild its base of readers and spread news a network of 70 reporters file from across the country. But Batiz said so far the app hasn't caught on with readers encountering an onslaught of obstacles to access his journalists' work. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/17275acb2fa232b1aef7ffe0c5b0f579
