repression carried out by the de facto authorities". Impact of sanctions applied by United States In 2018, English-language Telesur canceled "The Empire Files," a program produced by United States-based journalists Abby Martin and Mike Prysner. Martin, Prysner, and other Telesur contract journalists had their funding blocked by the application of United States sanctions against Venezuela. Academic Stuart Davis cites the cancellation as an example of how United States sanctions hamper public funding of media production in Venezuela. Distribution Telesur is available free-to-air via satellite in Latin America, the United States, Central Europe, Western Europe, and Northern Africa. The network's availability through cable television has been very limited in Latin America because of the network's editorial approach to several events and governments in the region; the station manager in 2007, Aram Arahonian, said in an interview that "cable owners do not provide us with any access [...] it's not frequent, but it has affected us in the large countries." According to Christopher Walker of the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, Telesur is Venezuela's "authoritarian media outlet" and has the ability to take advantage of both domestic and foreign media due to censorship of competing outlets in authoritarian states and openness in democratic states, which allow Telesur to broadcast. South America The availability of the channel via terrestrial television is greatly limited in the vast majority of South American countries. The only countries in the region that receive all of Telesur's broadcasts via terrestrial television are Venezuela and Ecuador, whose governments are sponsors of the channel. Telesur is currently available via Digital Terrestrial Television in Argentina, as part of the government-sponsored channel lineup which includes several other public service, educational, music, sports, and news channels. Venezuela started broadcasting Telesur via terrestrial television on 9 February 2007 and Ecuador on 15 July 2009. The rest of the sponsor countries broadcast some of the networks' programs, mainly the news, in their public and educational channels (see list of sister channels). The network started in February 2008 to broadcast some news programming to Brazil in Portuguese through several community stations in the state of Paraná. By 2011, Telesur is no longer available in Brazil. Cuba Although Cuba is one of the primary funders of Telesur, the channel is not available in all areas of the country. Additionally, it was not until late 2007 that its programming was broadcast daily on the island, and still