Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro threatened legal action against news outlets, accusing the Atlanta-based broadcaster CNN en Espanol and the Miami Herald of spreading what he said were false health rumors.

Maduro said he ordered a criminal investigation into the past week’s media coverage of a possible outbreak of a tropical disease in the central city of Maracay, which the government has denied.

“They tried to generate alarm in Venezuela, psychological warfare, terrorism,” Maduro said in a national address Thursday. “I’ve talked with the prosecutor so that our justice bodies act in the most firm and severe ways permitted by law.”

Maduro, who frequently targets CNN and the Miami Herald, said he was studying legal action to be taken outside of Venezuela. The former bus driver and union leader in February temporary revoked the accreditation of seven CNN journalists a week after he took Colombian television channel NTN24 off the air following its coverage of anti-government demonstrations. A Miami Herald reporter was briefly detained last year while reporting on the country’s shortages and municipal elections.

“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Maduro is accusing us instead of focusing on solving the country’s problems,” Myriam Marquez, executive editor of Nuevo Herald, Miami Herald Media Co.’s Spanish-language newspaper, said by telephone from Miami. “We stand by our stories.”

CCN En Espanol spokeswoman Caroline Rittenberry said the broadcaster “remains committed to covering all the stories of relevance to our audiences in the fair, accurate and balanced manner” in an e-mailed response to questions.

Website Blocked

NTN24, which Maduro also accused of spreading false health information, said in a statement Thursday that its website has been blocked in Venezuela since Sept. 16. During his speech, Maduro showed a 10-minute video of clips that had been broadcast on CNN en Espanol and NTN24 about speculation surrounding deaths attributed to tropical diseases.

Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry called on Venezuela to respect freedom of expression. In a statement posted on its website, the ministry said it hopes NTN24’s website problems in Venezuela are caused by technical problems and not “censorship via technological blockade.”

Maduro, who was elected with the narrowest margin in in 45 years in an emergency election after former President Hugo Chavez died from cancer last year, is facing declining popularity, the world’s fastest inflation and shortages of consumer goods including soap and car batteries. His approval rating fell 21 percentage points this year to 39 percent in August, according to a poll from Caracas-based Hinterlaces.

Currency Controls

“They’re all going to say that they are being politically persecuted now because justice is going to act,” Maduro said. “Whoever needs to go to jail to pay for these crimes will.”

Imports dropped 22 percent in the first half of the year from the same period of 2013, as Maduro sets aside $4.5 billion to pay for securities maturing next month. Tighter currency controls have pushed the bolivar to a record low against the dollar on the black market this month.

The South American nation’s benchmark 9.25 percent notes due 2027 have plunged almost 6 cents on the dollar to a seven- month low of 67.2 cents in the two days since Standard & Poor’s on Sept. 16 cut Venezuela to CCC+, a grade the bond rater says reflects at least a 50 percent chance of non-payment in the next two years.

Since Maduro won election in April 2013, Venezuela has seen a shift in the local media landscape as newspapers change hands. Caracas-based El Universal became the third private media company to be sold in July. The newspaper’s cartoonist Rayma Suprani said she was fired Thursday for using Chavez’s signature to satirize the country’s healthcare.