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/

[IndianaGreen]

1. FAIR's response to HRW and others, regarding RCTV's license not being renewed

Some of Chavez's critics on this board have posted a critique by HRW. Here is FAIR's response:

When Patrick McElwee of the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy interviewed representatives of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, all groups that have condemned Venezuela's action in denying RCTV's license renewal, he found that none of the spokespersons thought broadcasters were automatically entitled to license renewals, though none of them thought RCTV's actions in support of the coup should have resulted in the station having its license renewal denied. This led McElwee to wonder, based on the rights groups' arguments, "Could it be that governments like Venezuela have the theoretical right to not to renew a broadcast license, but that no responsible government would ever do it?"

McElwee acknowledged the critics' point that some form of due process should have been involved in the decisions, but explained that laws preexisting Chávez's presidency placed licensing decision with the executive branch, with no real provisions for a hearings process: "Unfortunately, this is what the law, first enacted in 1987, long before Chávez entered the political scene, allows. It charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal, but does not seem to require any administrative hearing. The law should be changed, but at the current moment when broadcast licenses are up for renewal, it is the prevailing law and thus lays out the framework in which decisions are made."

Government actions weighing on journalism and broadcast licensing deserve strong scrutiny. However, on the central question of whether a government is bound to renew the license of a broadcaster when that broadcaster had been involved in a coup against the democratically elected government, the answer should be clear, as McElwee concludes:

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5337/1/260

[slipslidingaway]

2. K&R. Control of oil profits and projects would not have anything

to do with the recent articles now would they?

:sarcasm:

Venezuela takes over refineries

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6610333.stm

"Four projects taken over in the Orinoco Belt - which can refine about 600,000 barrels of crude oil a day - reverted to state control at midnight local time.

Mr Chavez told cheering workers that foreign oil companies had damaged Venezuela's national interests and that reclaiming them represented an historic victory.

"This is the true nationalisation of our natural resources," the president said during a ceremony at the Jose Oil processing plant.

"Today we are closing a perverse cycle."

State oil company PDVSA will control at least 60% of the projects, which have been ceded by ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Statoil and Total."