HAVANA - While Hugo Chavez admitted to having cancer in a prepared address on Thursday night from Havana, Cuba, where he was receiving treatment, his government was simultaneously fabricating frivolous charges against one of Venezuela’s few opposition media outlets, Globovision.

During Chavez’s absence from Venezuela since June 6th, his country has suffered several simultaneous maladies - numerous widespread blackouts, decrepit hospitals, food shortages, and a deadly prison riot that has yet to be resolved.

The charges against Globovision are said to have originated from the TV channel’s coverage of the recent El Rodeo prison riot, which it says violated a media law that Chavez passed during a time in 2010 when he still had a rubber stamp congress.

According to Pedro Maldonado, Chavez’s director of the National Telecommunications Commission, Globovision’s coverage of the prison riot could have caused “anxiety or disorder” because it broadcast live images of the prison riot.

This is the seventh probe of Globovision by the Chavez regime. Past charges have included allegations of tax evasion, as well as investigations of its coverage of an earthquake. In 2007, Chavez had shut down the country’s most popular TV station, RCTV, for what he claimed was its role in his removal for 48 hours in 2002.

Maria Fernanda Flores, a vice president at Globovision, told reporters, "We aren't the ones to blame that it's been 15 days at Rodeo and still this government hasn't been able to calm down" the situation at the prison.

Flores stated that this was the "seventh administrative case that they have opened against us for carrying out our work, which is only to inform."