Summary: For much of the last month, the Venezuelan streets have been awash with demonstrators. The economy there shows signs of collapsing. Inflation is at a record high. Many are going hungry, lacking access to the basics - like clean water and medicine. With almost 40 protesters killed in the past few weeks, a lot of the news coverage comes down to the laying of blame. The official government narrative goes that right wing media are trying to force a foreign intervention while demonstrators are accusing the president, Nicolas Maduro, of trying to subvert democracy, by suppressing the media. Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez spent much of his presidency at war with conservative news outlets. He blamed some of them for backing an attempted coup against him in 2002, which they did, on air. Chavez made changes on the broadcast side - both regulatory and related to ownership - Maduro has continued that trend with print outlets. But even formerly friendly voices in the news media are starting to turn on the Maduro government. More and more journalists say they cannot report freely for mainstream news outlets and have ended up working online using new platforms, like the messaging app Telegram, to get the story out. However, the emergence of something like 300 new, digital news sources over the past few years has done little to bridge the political gap. It turns out that Venezuelans are just as divided online as they are on the streets. More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost
