Free Speech and the Corporate Media

[IndianaGreen]

I will add to a comment by Matt Parker (who doesn't support license revocation), that the law under which the RCTV license was not renewed, dates back to the mid-1980s, long before Chavez became President. The Chavez Administration did not yank RCTV's broadcast license, it simply did not renew it, just as we would have done under FCC rules if a radio or TV station had repeatedly violated the terms of its broadcast license.

Free Speech and the Corporate Media

By Matt Parker
5-30-07, 9:24 am

If a news station supports an anti-democratic coup against a democratically elected president, does that station have the right to broadcast ultra-right propaganda over public airwaves? If the government shuts that station down for its democratic violations, does that constitute an attack on freedom of speech? Do the people of a country have the right to decide what they allow broadcasted in their airspace? Or do the corporations have that right?

These are some of the central questions generated by Venezuela’s recent shutdown of “RCTV”, a right-wing television channel that supported the coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. The station reported several lies during the coup, actively encouraged citizens to riot against the government, and then failed to report Chavez’s return to power three days later, instead deciding to broadcast cartoons.

Now, the Venezuelan government has declined to renew RCTV’s broadcast license, and in it’s place, has created a new progressive public television channel. RCTV, obviously facing a big dip in their profits (since they can no longer broadcast in Venezuela), has used their remaining corporate media friends and contacts to incite several protests all across the country, a few of which have turned violent. At the same time, pro-socialist and progressive forces have staged several mass rallies in support of the government’s decision to rid their country of the right-wing propaganda machine.

So who is the greater threat to democracy? A television station with a large audience, vast amounts of wealth, and a proven willingness to lie to it’s viewers and incite them to violence and large-scale anti-democratic actions like, say, a coup? Or a democratically elected government supported by a majority of the population that decides to revoke the news station’s license to broadcast lies over public airwaves?

And isn’t there something hypocritical about a corporation screaming about the violation of its democratic right to free speech, when it has a well documented history of grossly anti-democratic behavior?

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5353/1/264/