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DU'ers have discussed this for ages, and ages. You should have attempted to inform yourself when the topic was still news, and was being discussed much more often, in Late Breaking News at length. For any DU'ers who still haven't heard any of this, although that's completely unlikely: 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), " 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." More: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107~~~~~~~~~~An enlightening message sent from former news director at RCTV to Jackson Diehl, major propagandist and a-hole at the Washington Post: A letter to the Washignton Post
Mr. Jackson Diehl:
It's impossible to believe that a journalist at a newspaper as important as
the Washington Post is so badly informed as you appear to be in your article
"Chavez's Censorship: Where Disrespect Can Land You in Jail," published
March 28.
You can believe, if you wish, that Venezuela used to be "the most prosperous
and stable democracy in Latin America" (with 80% of the population in
extreme poverty, civil strife, and military uprisings), put you can't write,
without lying, that in Venezuela, journalists are persecuted and the press
is censored, because there isn't a single case that supports what you say.
You say the truth when you affirm that "some newspapers and television
stations openly sided with attempts to oust the president via coup, strike
or a national referendum." Before being Minister of Information and
Communication, I worked as news director for RCTV, an important private TV
station in Venezuela. Immediately after the coup of April 2002 against
President Hugo Chavez, when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the
streets demanding the return of their elected president, RCTV and other
private channels decided not to report on this civil uprising, preferring to
broadcast cartoons and old movies. Since I couldn't bring myself to
participate in this censorship, I resigned.
As journalist Duncan Campbell reported for the (London) Guardian, "The five
principal TV channels gave publicity spots to those who convened the
demonstrations that supported the coup." Moreover, the principal media
owners in Venezuela assured Dictator Carmona, "We can't guarantee the army's
loyalty, but we can promise the media's support" (see "Coup and
Counter-Coup," The Economist Global Agenda, April 16, 2002).
The private media promoted all of the campaigns to discredit President
Chavez and his policies. For example, during the petroleum industry sabotage
of Christmas 2002-2003, more than 13,000 political propaganda advertisements
were broadcast in a two month period in order to "animate an economically
devastating and socially destabilizing general strike directed at
overthrowing Chavez. (These ads) energetically promoted opposition leaders,
while at the same time defaming the President and ignoring news that favored
him" (see COHA Investigation Memorandum. The Venezuelan Media: More Than
Words in Play," Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Press Memorandum 03.18,
April 30, 2003). However, despite all this, the openly conspiratorial media
were not persecuted, neither then, nor now.
You are lying to your readers, Mister Diehl, when you say, "Beginning this
month journalists or other independent activists accused by the government
of the sort of offenses alleged by Izarra can be jailed without due process
and sentenced to up to 30 years," because you are confusing the law that
protects children from obscenity in the broadcast media with the laws on
national security and the President's security, which are more strict in the
United States.
US Code, Title 18, Section 871, "Threats against the President and
presidential successors," prohibits any offense or threat made against the
President of the United States. Examples include July 2, 1996, when two
people were arrested by the secret service for shouting insults at President
Clinton ("You suck and those boys died...") on the occasion of an attack
against a military installation in Saudi Arabia in which 19 US soldiers
died; or a minister who was arrested for saying "God will hold you to
account" to President Clinton, concerning his decision not to prohibit a
certain kind of abortion.
US Code, Title 18, Section 1752(a)(1)(ii) declares that it is a crime to
intentionally enter a restricted zone during a presidential visit, and it
has been used to arrest more than 1,800 demonstrators during the Republican
Convention in August of 2004, despite the fact that the demonstrators were
several blocks from President Bush's location; it was also used to arrest a
gentleman for carrying a sign against war on October 24, 2002, during Bush's
visit to Ohio; also arrested was a dead soldier's mother for wearing an
anti-war t-shirt during a speech by First Lady Laura Bush in New Jersey; and
a couple in West Virginia was arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts during
a rally. More: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2187974&mesg_id=2188203Posted by great DU'er, plasticsundance, September 21, 2006 ~~~~~~~~~~~Venezuela: Not What You Think
By Robin Hahnel
~snip~
only the small fraction of Americans who access the alternative media learn that RCTV was not shut down because it campaigns openly against the government -- which it has for nine years. Instead, when its license came up for renewal, its application was denied because it had violated 200 conditions of its licensing agreement -- many violations having to do with its role in helping to organize a military coup that nearly toppled the duly elected President of the country. Moreover, the station continues to broadcast on a cable network, and the opposition in Venezuela still broadcasts on more major TV channels than there are channels sympathetic to the government. In stark contrast, the alternative media in the US cannot be viewed on any major channel. Consequently the vast majority of Americans receive all their news from a mainstream media which never questions whether the US has any right to dominate other nations, but only debates the wisdom of alternative strategies for doing so, and would never dream of questioning the desirability of an economic system dominated by their corporate owners. Nevertheless the storyline most Americans hear remains: Freedom of the press is dead in totalitarian Venezuela, but alive and well in the democratic United States.
It is important to distinguish between whether mainstream coverage of issues like amendments to the constitution and the TV license is biased, whether there are grounds for reproaching the Venezuelan government, and whether the policies are wise. Clearly the mainstream media has failed to report relevant facts and their coverage has been grossly unfair. From what I know, the procedure that led to non-renewal of the TV license was unobjectionable, and the proposed constitutional amendment will be decided by a thoroughly democratic process. So while there are ample grounds for reproaching mainstream media coverage in the US, as far as I can see there are no grounds for reproaching the Venezuelan government in either case. However, this does not mean the policies are necessarily wise. Those in Venezuela who argue that the revolutionary government would be hammered by the imperial press in any case are surely correct. On the other hand, that does not mean either initiative is good policy, independent of the news coverage it receives. Moreover, giving one's enemies an easy chance to focus on a negative storyline seems unwise -- unless the policy has important benefits.
Unfortunately, the fact that only a tiny fraction of the American public are ever exposed to balanced coverage of the Venezuelan stories defined by our mainstream media is only one problem. A larger problem is that practically nobody in the United States ever hears anything about truly newsworthy stories in Venezuela. Stories about exciting new political and economic initiatives that are dramatically reducing poverty and challenging popular myths about the abilities of ordinary people to make good political and economic decisions for themselves go virtually uncovered in the United States.1 More: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18816.htm |
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