Globovision: The Loose Cannon of Venezuelan Media

[IndianaGreen]

Venezuela is trying to reign-in their version of the Rupert Murdochs, Glen Becks and Rush Limbaughs, who are not journalists in any sense of the word. The head of Globovision has given millions to GOP causes in the USA.

As American progressives we should support the Venezuelan people against their entrenched, privileged elites.

Globovision: The Loose Cannon of Venezuelan Media

May 22nd 2009, by Carlos Ruiz - VenCentral

In their classic 1988 book Manufacturing Consent,Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky demonstrated how corporate media selecttopics, place emphasis, set boundaries, ask questions and shape contentin accordance with broad capitalist imperatives. It’s a largelyunconscious process driven by conformist human beings, and infinitelymore effective than the heavy-handed methods of past communist regimes.

During the 20th century, ballooning marketing budgets played acrucial role in the marginalization, and ultimate extinction ofinfluential labor-based/progressive media. Today’s mass mediasubservience to elite power structures is an inevitable consequence ofthe pursuit of profit. Advertising revenues continue to flow to anygiven publication, radio or TV station on the condition that itsreporting and general content supports a business-friendly status quo.

News/ad-consuming audiences are literally a product for sale, thoughwe more closely resemble victimized bystanders. Above all, theoppressed and impoverished of the world are done a grave disservice asa consequence of writers being selected for a proven disposition torespect traditional authority and elite power. Capitalist society inthis context represents a filtering system in which the most powerfulare overwhelmingly the least radical. Needless to say, the hierarchy ofjournalism is no different.

THE PROBLEM IN REVOLUTIONARY VENEZUELA

Venezuela’s socialist national project is well underway and makingever more significant strides, in spite of an entrenched, privilegedminority in opposition, relentlessly spurred on by the corporate mediaand its vociferous attacks. As the anti-capitalist character of theChavez government revealed itself, it became starkly clear thatdemocratic opinion was not being reflected in the established privatemedia. Influential newspapers dropped their pretenses of varying“liberal” tendencies, and increasingly appeared to be acting from anagreed playbook.

The single most popular TV station (RCTV) has already been relegatedfrom the free airwaves to satellite-only broadcasting, ostensibly forhaving materially assisted a US-led coup in April 2002, but principallyto minimise the effect of a daily programming schedule rife withmachismo, the objectification of women, consumerism, violence andgeneral idiocy. That decision not to renew RCTV’s license, whichexpired in 2007, was entirely down to government prerogative. Otheroptions exist in Venezuela: revoking an active license can be doneunder certain circumstances, broadcasters can be suspended, and thenational government reserves the right to expropriate anyprivately-held enterprise.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4462