César Batiz

César Batiz is a Venezuelan investigative journalist with the country's largest newspaper, Últimas Noticias. In many of his writings, he has taken on issues of corruption that have put him at odds with the government of Hugo Chávez.

César Batiz graduated from the Universidad del Zulia in 1996. He has worked for the publications Panorama, La Verdad, Últimas Noticias, and La Electricidad de Caracas. In 2008 he returned to Últimas Noticias, the largest-circulation daily in Venezuela as an investigative journalist.

The Fundación Polar published the book La Desgracia de Ayer ("The Misfortune of Yesterday"), which includes a text that Batiz wrote after participating in a Journalism and Memory Workshop taught by Milagros Socorro.

Últimas Noticias published on February 22, 2009 an article in which Batiz looked into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of journalist Orel Sambrano, who had been writing columns about the rise in drug trafficking in his native city of Valencia.

Batiz was one of at least a dozen journalists who were injured by suspected government supporters while participating in a peaceful August 2009 protest in Caracas against proposed legislation that would restrict freedom of expression. The journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, “were holding banners and handing out leaflets warning against provisions in the bill that prohibits the distribution of content that could cause, among other things, 'terror in children', incite 'hate, aggressiveness' or 'unruliness', 'deform language', or 'threaten the mental or physical health of the people'. They were surrounded by the suspected government supporters, who accused them of being 'oligarchs' and 'enemies of the people', according to CPJ interviews with local journalists. Últimas Noticias Editor Eleazar Díaz Rangel told CPJ that the journalists were wearing press credentials. According to local news reports, the attackers work for the government-owned broadcaster AvilaTV”. According to Globovision, Batiz was struck in the neck and face and taken to a private hospital.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the assault on the journalists. “We are shocked by the vicious attack on journalists who were exercising their right to protest provisions of a bill that could impact their ability to report freely”, said CPJ's Carlos Lauría. “This is not the first time journalists have been attacked by pro-government supporters. Venezuelan authorities must do everything in their power to put an immediate end to these attacks on the press.” The National Assembly ended up approving the bill.

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Wikipedia