Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says he will propose legislation aimed at ridding the media of "sensationalism".
"They will call me a dictator, that doesn't matter to me," he said during a public event in the central state of Miranda.
"I will make very strict norms to end sensationalism and the campaign and propaganda that feeds on the blood and death it promotes."
The leftist president accused the "bourgeois press" of undermining efforts to combat a wave of violent crime that claimed anywhere from 12,000 to 25,000 lives in 2013.
"They are betting on the failure of the plan for national peace I am trying to get under way," Maduro said.
"It is not about being a dictator. It's a matter that a head of state much assume his responsibility when an entire country clamours for peace and they (elements of the media) come out to delight in death and promote it," he said.
The president also complained that the owners of several major Venezuelan news outlets lived outside the Andean country.
"The owner of (Caracas daily) El Universal lives in Miami, in New York," Maduro said. "He never comes to Venezuela, truly. It should be prohibited for people who don't live in Venezuela to own communications media. Seems like a good idea to me. We need to study it."
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