Guillermo Zuloaga isn’t exactly a paragon of responsible journalism. In 2002 he and his Venezuelan television network, Globovision, backed a military coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chavez. Since then, Globovision has been so gratuitously and vociferously anti-Chavez it makes Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Barack Obama seem even-handed.

So who could make a media martyr out of a guy like Zuloaga? Chavez may well have done it on March 25, when his left-wing government arrested Zuloaga for making comments “offensive and disrespectful” to the President. Speaking in Aruba the week before, Zuloaga had remarked that it was a shame Chavez wasn’t overthrown in the failed April 2002 coup and said the putsch happened because Chavez had ordered his forces to fire on anti-government protesters, an opposition charge that has never been proven. Zuloaga went on to argue that Venezuela lacks freedom of expression because Chavez is increasingly harassing independent media, including Globovision, a network Chavez has repeatedly threatened to shut down. “Chavez,” said Zuloaga, who denies the defamation-against-the-state charge and is now free on bail, “is setting up a disguised communism.” (Read a review of the book Chavez gifted to President Obama in April 2009.)

Provocative stuff – but in few countries would it merit the five years in prison Zuloaga could get if he’s convicted under Venezuela’s defamation laws. Another Chavez opponent, former Zulia state Governor Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, was arrested on March 24 for suggesting, on Globovision, that Venezuelan officials had aided the Basque terrorist group ETA, and that Venezuela had become a key transshipment point for drug traffickers. (He denies the charge of spreading false information but remains locked up, say prosecutors, as a flight risk.) “The end of impunity for the bourgeoisie has come,” Chavez declared. He rejected claims that the arrests were politically motivated efforts to stifle opposition to his 11-year-old revolution, as the economy falters and he faces a growing challenge in this year’s parliamentary elections. And he insisted that due process was being followed. “Who can criticize that?” he asked.

It’s not due process of law that’s being criticized in these cases. It’s the law itself that’s under international scrutiny, even in judicially challenged Latin America. “The real question is not the legality of these (criminal defamation) measures but their legitimacy,” says Mariclen Stelling of the independent Media Observatory in Caracas. Carlos Lauria, Americas coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, agrees: “There is a growing international consensus that laws that criminalize speech are not compatible with human rights.” Last year Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica scrapped their criminal defamation laws; Mexico and El Salvador became the first to eliminate them, at least at the federal level, in 2007. This year justices in countries including Colombia and Chile have dismissed a number of defamation convictions. (See what Chavez’s presidential win meant for Latin American democracy.)

Speech that incites the violent overthrow of a government or physical injury to people is still a criminal offense in most if not all nations. But libel and slander are being moved to civil courts, where most jurists agree they belong, and out of the criminal arena – where the threat of prison sentences is often used by governments and elites to muzzle press freedoms and dissent.

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JUNEAU, Alaska – Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had some harsh words for her detractors in the health care debate with a thinly veiled, March Madness-themed Facebook post in which she declared, “never retreat, instead RELOAD!”

The title of the former Alaska governor’s Facebook post on Sunday was “Warning: Subject to New Politically Correct Language Police Censorship.” Palin then discussed her love of college basketball and compared the NCAA tournament to a “heated, competitive primary election.”

The former basketball player then stepped some of the rhetoric she has employed recently to describe her dislike of the Democrat-backed health overhaul.

She wrote about using “strong weapons” and “big guns” to drive to the basket. She urged teams to “shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win.” She says “bombing through the press” is part of what teams must do to help reach their goals.

“To the teams that desire making it this far next year: Gear up! In the battle, set your sights on next season’s targets! From the shot across the bow — the first second’s tip-off — your leaders will be in the enemy’s crosshairs, so you must execute strong defensive tactics,” she wrote. “You won’t win only playing defense, so get on offense!”

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