Venezuela channel gives CNN competition

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Sat, Mar. 26, 2005

Venezuela channel gives CNN competition

IAN JAMES

Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - Loose computer cables, laptops and a video camera fill a cramped hotel room where a team of journalists is laying the groundwork for a new satellite television station that they say will be Latin America's alternative to CNN.With financial backing from Venezuela's government, Telesur is scheduled to begin transmitting by satellite 24 hours a day within three or four months, offering news and opinion shows from a decidedly South American perspective.

"Telesur's reason for being is the need to see Latin America with Latin American eyes," director Aram Aharonian said Friday while taking a short break from his work planning programs and hiring staff.

"It's our right to have our own vision of what happens in Latin America, and not what Europeans or Americans, or whoever, tell us about how we are, who we are," said Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan who has worked for years as a print journalist.

The idea has long been discussed across Latin America and is now receiving a boost from governments like Venezuela that are concerned with increasing their countries' cultural independence.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called Telesur an important step toward Latin American integration.His government is putting about $2.5 million into startup costs with support from Argentina and Uruguay, and the channel has an agreement to share material with the state-run TV Brasil, Aharonian said.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/11235559.htm
(Free registration is required)


http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/Story+Image_thumb_bushchav200.jpg

[NeoConsSuck]

1. I would like to donate money to this station..

is there any way it could be done?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Here's an article written about "Telesur" in the early planning stages

Venezuela Launches Latin American News Channel

SARAH WAGNER*

Caracas (Venezuela) - 27th January 2005


The Venezuelan Council of Ministers approved on January 24th a decree creating Telesur, a satellite news channel intended to give a southern perspective to balance the information provided by the the dominating channel in Latin America, CNN in Spanish.

In a press conference held after shortly after the decree was approved, the Minister of Communication and Information, Andrés Izarra, explained that this new state-run communications company, Telesur, would be a crucial communication tool for the region and, "a force of integration, in which we hope that all the countries in the South participate."

He went on to add that, "We have decided to open this business as an autonomous company because it is the legal form that facilitates the signing of agreements, the sale of stocks, and the concretion of strategic alliances with other countries. The idea is that Telesur is not only a space for the voice of the South, for our own culture and idiosyncrasies, but also that it is a space of confluence for the communication of the South towards the world." For the moment, the Venezuelan government will be the only stockholder in the business, but negotiations are in the works with Brazil and Argentina, which will permit their participation in the near future.
(snip)

Many journalists and specialists from Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela, among other nations, also spoke on the program, emphasizing the importance of the new media and pointing out that it will create an alternate source of information for people fed up with corporate, neoliberal propaganda.

Telesur correspondents will be based in the following locations: Bogotá, Lima, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro.
(snip/...)

http://www.alia2.net/article3639.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This could be very interesting, wouldn't you say?

[FlemingsGhost]

3. Latin Am. is finally freeing itself from the grip of U.S. imperialism

It must be doubly insulting to the State Dept. that it is Chavez, a Castro protegé, leading the charge.

Viva!

[sasquatch]

4. CNN: "WE MUST INVADE VENEZUELA NOW!!"

:scared:

[Massacure]

5. So will they broadcast to the U.S. as well?

[mom cat]

7. You just gave me something to smile about...Thanks

:evilgrin:

[truthisfreedom]

6. telesur sounds something like telstar... the 60's hit produced and

recorded by the legendary Joe Meek, celebrating the satellite by the same name... a very early one.



when telstar was damaged by radiation from a nuclear test, it went silent... and shortly afterward, Joe Meek's life ended as well.

http://www.retrofuture.com/telstar.html

[donsu]

8. kick

nt

[Spazito]

9. Excellent!

Chavez is doing all the right things for his country and that is just 'not acceptable' to the bushites and their corporate sycophants like CNN, etc.

I LOVE how he continues to thumb his nose at the bushites and he does it with both humour and intellect, both of which are sadly lacking in the bush admin, imo.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Sort of a Latin American Al-Jazeera

I like it!

[w4rma]

11. A Latin American BBC? (nt)

[Spazito]

12. Or CBC?

That was what struck me immediately on reading this. I love CBC!

[daleo]

13. This seems like a more general Latin American initiative.

But the American media is pre-emptively spinning it as Venezuelan, thus communist, thus unreliable. At least going by the headline and first few paragraphs.

[Robbien]

14. What a sorry state that is.

Right now South and Central America is awash in Michael Jackson and Schiavo coverage interrupted by Pepsi and McDonald's commercials. The nations start up their own television network and we call it propaganda.