In Venezuela, Reality TV

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Sunday, June 10, 2007 by TruthDig.com

In Venezuela, Reality TV

by Rosa Miriam Elizalde

In ancient Greece, when a crime was committed, punishment was meted out by the sword. Today we understand the difference between the means of punishment and the end result. In Venezuela, as Eleazar Díaz Rangel, director of the newspaper Últimas Noticias, advised, this distinction remains perfectly clear. From now on, he affirmed in his Sunday column, “The owners of RCTV can no longer use Channel 2 to inform and misinform according to their political or commercial interests. In this sense, the decision affects them, but the possibility of working through other means-television, radio, business interests-is not denied them.” In the game of manipulation, Marcel Granier, the owner of the network, has come out as a strong candidate for canonization by major international media, which paint him as a victim. No one now remembers RCTV’s suicidal rallying calls in support of the coup of April 2002, or its obstinate refusal to broadcast information about the popular protests that made possible Chavez’s return to Miraflores.

With Granier as the hero of the bonfire of political vanities, a new villain has appeared-the businessman Gustavo Cisneros. A new and unexpected kindling feeds the fires of the opposition demonstrations in eastern Caracas: copies of the best-seller “Cisneros: Un Empresario Global,” the biography of the owner of television station Venevisión, whose license was renewed on May 28.

Venevisión participated with RCTV and other private television stations in the coup against President Chávez in April 2002. The memories of journalists, television executives and coup plotters congratulating each other for their close collaboration in the coup are still fresh in the minds of Venezuelans.

In 2003, Cisneros met with Chávez and with ex-President Jimmy Carter. Since then, he has changed his violently anti-Chavista rhetoric and his calls for civil disobedience, while maintaining his criticism of the Venezuelan government. Shortly afterwards, another VHF national television station, Televen, followed suit.

Venevisión and Televen are proof positive that the end of RCTV´s license to transmit is not the nationalization of the mass media in Venezuela. In this country, more than others in Latin America, there is a plethora of media: privately owned commercial media (80 percent), state-owned media, public service media (TVES) and community media.

Why ignore this reality? Why do so few now remember that Venevisión and Televen are still there, opponents of Chávez, but yet with their licenses extended?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/10/1775/

[silverweb]

1. Excellent article.

Speaking of Venezuela, my daughter is doing a paper on "misperceptions in the United States about Venezuela," which very much involves this business with RCTV.

She supposed to be referencing "scholarly texts" rather than on-line sources, but has been getting bogged down in some anti-Chavez propaganda-type stuff.

Can any of the DUers here I know are very knowledgeable about Venezuela recommend some good unbiased text sources for her?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. I agree with your post

I know that lots of people in DU will say that revoking any broadcasting license whatsoever, even for lying outright, goes against freedom of the press, and that might be so in theory, however, we have a far more secretive manipulation of the press right here in this country. (And that is far worse, in my opinion).

The Nazis suppressed the press through Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, very much the way the press has been (and is) suppressed under the Bush Administration. The effect this had was to use all media to support the aims of the Nazi Party. which was a very clever way of spreading the Nazi ideology like a cancer. Far worse than anything in Venezuela. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia explaining how the Propaganda Ministry suppressed the press:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press

"The dictatorship of Adolf Hitler largely suppressed freedom of the press through Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. As the Ministry's name implies, propaganda did not carry the negative connotations that it does today (or did in the Allied countries); how-to manuals were openly distributed by that same ministry explaining the craft of effective propaganda. The Ministry also acted as a central control-point for all media, issuing orders as to what stories could be run and what stories would be suppressed. Anyone involved in the film industry -- from directors to the lowliest assistant -- had to sign an oath of loyalty to the Nazi Party, due to opinion-changing power Goebbels perceived movies to have. (Goebbels himself maintained some personal control over every single film made in Nazi Europe.) Journalists who crossed the Propaganda Ministry were routinely imprisoned or shot as traitors."