US Media: Distorting the Venezuelan media story (FAIR)

[IndianaGreen]

US Media: Distorting the Venezuelan media story

By FAIR

Media Advisory

Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs

Distorting the Venezuelan media story

The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.

<snip>

In keeping with the media script that has bad guy Chávez brutishly silencing good guys in the democratic opposition, all these articles skimmed lightly over RCTV's history, the Venezuelan government's explanation for the license denial and the process that led to it.

RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks' participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup?hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), "(Venezuelan) officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."

As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5337/1/260/

[rpannier]

1. You've left out that RCTV

which is the #1 television station in Venezuela is being taken over by the government.
RCTV will cease to be an independent network.
RCTV was the only major network that presents any sort of opposition to the government that can be seen throughout Venezuela.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch have criticized this move.

[IndianaGreen]

2. RCTV is not being taken over. RCTV is still broadcasting on cable and on satellite

RCTV will continue to be seen on cable just as Americans watch Faux News on cable.

What RCTV lost, after a long due process procedure, was the license to broadcast on the public airwaves.

[rpannier]

4. And the Public airwave has become a state controlled network

[IndianaGreen]

5. The public airwaves belong to the public, something Americans seem to have forgotten

Network news came into existence because the public insisted, through the FCC, that a small portion of the evening be reserved for public service programming, so the networks decided to fill that small amount of time with a news broadcast.

[rpannier]

7. Ummm...

The network is now owned by the Venezuelan Government.
This will give the Government another opportunity to syphon all information into a pro-Government position while stifling opposition.
You can try and frame this a number of ways.
Chavez' behavior over this has been criticized by
Human Rights Watch
The Nation Magazine has questioned his actions, while still applauding much of what he's accomplished for the poor
and
Folha News of Brazil. The left leaning newspaper in Sao Paolo Brasil and generally Chavez Supporter.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Thank you for this! DUers need to understand what a job is being done on us

by our war profiteering corporate news monopolies, about Hugo Chavez, Venezuela and the highly successful democratic left in South America.

For a counter-balance to our corporate media propaganda, I suggest: www.venezuelanalysis.com. Also, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is available as a DVD at AxisOfLogic.com.

My analogy, re RCTV is this: What if Faux News called for the kidnapping of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the shutdown of Congress and the courts, and actively aided the coup plotters, and used the PUBLIC airwaves to promote their coup? Would we not have the right to deny them a license to use the PUBLIC airwaves? All sovereign people have that right--and the laws about it are similar in Venezuela to our own.

Chavez and his government has shown exceeding restraint, it seems to me. They have only denied a license renewal to the very worst of the TV stations that supported the coup attempt, and they did not storm their studios after the coup, to shut them down, and did not arrest anybody; they waited until their license was up for renewal, and took the logical, legal and rightful step of not renewing it.

Rightwing corporations own most of the news media in Venezuela, as they do here. I think that MUCH MORE can and should be required of these corporations, as to using the public airwaves fairly and in the public interest. We have a right to require POSITIVE action, not just NOT participating in a fascist coup (which, arguably, our corporate news monopolies actually did, on Nov. 2, 2004, when they DOCTORED their exit polls to cover up a Kerry victory, and also by blackholing the news about "trade secret," proprietary vote counting by rightwing electronic voting corporations).

Just think of having a government elected by over 60% of the voters, in highly monitored, and highly transparent, elections, acting in our interest, with regard to the corporate news monopolies!

THAT is why Chavez is being vilified over this--not because what his government did was wrong, illegal or undemocratic--but because it is a PRECEDENT that they DON'T WANT US TO UNDERSTAND. God help them if we should ever get any ideas about corporate responsibility to the public in the United States!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Hell, a private citizen had the feds at his door cuz he

uttered that they might have hung the wrong man, in reference to the Saddam hanging fiesta.

[Peace Patriot]

8. Please see further discussion at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x284141

[Peace Patriot]

9. More information also here...

Setting the Stage for Turmoil in Caracas
Washington’s New Imperial Strategy In Venezuela
by Chris Carlson
May 15, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=12823

[struggle4progress]

10. Rats! Too late to recommend!

But many thanx for postin