President blames soap operas for crime
Published:Wednesday | January 22, 2014 | 12:00 AM
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP):
President Nicolas Maduro has a new villain as he campaigns to bring down Venezuela's spiralling crime: TV soap operas. He accuses the telenovelas of spreading "anti-values" to young people by glamorising violence, guns and drugs.
The criticism follows attacks last year by Maduro on violent video games and the Hollywood movie, Spider-Man.
On Monday night, his vice-president, Jorge Arreaza, met with broadcast and pay TV operators to review the prime-time line-up, warning that they could be in violation of a 2004 law mandating "socially responsible" programming. The two sides will meet in a week with the aim of drafting an agreement on meeting those obligations.
It's unclear whether the government will take steps to restrict programming or impose harsher rules on telenovelas, which are hugely popular across Latin America.