BY CHRISTINA HOAG
                      Special to The Herald

                      CARACAS - Long used to President Hugo Chávez's intemperate outbursts against the news media,
                      Venezuelan journalists charge that the attacks against them have escalated from verbal assaults into
                      an official campaign of physical harassment, leading international press groups to warn that media
                      freedom is in serious jeopardy.

                      Several reporters allege that they have been followed, threatened and had their phones tapped in
                      recent weeks, and attribute the actions to a campaign orchestrated from Miraflores Presidential Palace.

                      ''One of the things they say is that my daughter is going to be the first death of [Chávez's] revolution,''
                      said Patricia Poleo, editor of the daily El Nuevo País, who has been relentless in uncovering government
                      corruption. ``If anything happens, I hold the president responsible.''

                      COMPLAINTS

                      The Interamerican Human Rights Commission on March 15 ordered the administration to take
                      ''precautionary measures'' to protect Poleo and four other print and television journalists who have
                      complained of physical harassment.

                      The tension has alarmed international organizations, who say Venezuela is close to becoming a danger
                      zone for reporters along with Cuba, Haiti and Colombia.

                      ''There is a deliberate policy by the state to restrict the exercise of freedom of expression and the right
                      to information in Venezuela,'' said the Miami-based Inter American Press Association last week.
                      ``Chávez has exceeded the stage of very violent verbal attacks and incitations of mobs against the
                      country's media to reach physical aggression against cameramen and reporters.''

                      The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists issued a ''red alert'' for Venezuela, asking Chávez
                      to stop his ''relentless diatribes against the media,'' while the Iberoamerican Journalists Association
                      urged the international community to pressure the Chávez government ``to avoid and prevent any
                      move against the press.''

                      Journalists say that while previous instances of aggression, including shoving reporters and shouting
                      epithets at them, appeared to be isolated acts by fanatical Chávez supporters, in recent weeks signs
                      have increased that the aggression is being formally sponsored by government officials.

                      At Chávez's March 17 radio show, local newspapers reported that a Chávez supporter was videotaping
                      journalists covering the event. When questioned, the videotaper ominously said the film was to identify
                      the reporters to his colleagues.

                      On March 13, the official government news agency Venpres published a story on its website denouncing
                      that Poleo, Globovision TV commentator José Domingo Blanco, and Ibeyise Pacheco, editor of a tabloid
                      newspaper, were ''narcojournalists'' being paid off by drug cartels to smear the Chávez government.

                      Chávez later termed the story ''a mistake'' and agency Director Oscar Navas Tortolero resigned, but
                      Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín and Vice President Diosdado Cabello said the journalists
                      should publicly submit to drug tests.

                      Rodríguez added that the reporters ``come out crying boo-hoo-hoo -- when every day they slander
                      me.''

                      Nevertheless, government officials deny that they are carrying out a campaign against reporters. ''It
                      would be very clumsy for the government to try to harm some journalists because, in some way, they
                      want to be the center of attention,'' Cabello said.

                      `RIGHT OF REPLY'

                      The president's followers say he is entitled to exercise his constitutional ''right of reply'' to unfair news
                      coverage.

                      ''The media have taken a political position, which is legitimate in a democracy,'' says journalist William
                      Lara, president of the National Assembly. ``But just as legitimate is Chavez's right to defend himself.
                      They've called him crazy, a fascist, compared him to Hitler. No president has been subjected to this.''

                      As evidence of the press' blatant opposition bias, officials point to El Nacional's March 3 publication of a
                      fictitious front-page story in which French intellectual Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde
                      Diplomatique, a Paris scholarly review, was highly critical of the Chávez regime.

                      After Ramonet disavowed any knowledge of the ''interview,'' which the paper took from a Venezuelan
                      website without verifying its authenticity, the author later admitted to inventing it as an experiment for
                      a thesis about the unreliability of the Caribbean press.

                      Crowed Chávez: ``The media are full of lies and you cannot believe anything they say, anything can be
                      a lie.''

                      Analysts say that the Venezuelan media have traditionally been tough on government, but in the past
                      presidents would respond with ''under the table'' measures such as limiting imports of newsprint.

                      ''The press has been aggressive with all governments, but they were never attacked back,'' says Luis
                      Vicente León, director of Datanalisis opinion polling firm.

                      ``Chávez is attacking them frontally, and at times, he is right.''

                      Nevertheless, with journalists reporting increasing harassment and growing international concern,
                      Chávez has tried to temper his fervent followers' actions by saying that his grudge is with the ''oligarch''
                      media barons whose business interests are threatened by his leftist ``peaceful revolution.''

                      The reporters, he says, are merely ''workers'' doing their bosses' bidding.