Media Battles in Latin America Not About "Free Speech"

[Judi Lynn]

Media Battles in Latin America Not About "Free Speech"
Friday 08 January 2010

by: Mark Weisbrot | The Center for Economic and Policy Research

For at least a month now in Ecuador there has been a battle over regulation of the media. It has been in the front pages of the newspapers most of the time, and a leading daily, El Comercio, referred to the fight as one for "defense of human rights and the free practice of journalism." This was in response to the government's closing down of a major TV station, Teleamazonas, for three days beginning December 22.

International organizations such as the Washington-based Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists joined the Ecuadorian media in denouncing the government's actions, with the latter calling it "nothing but an attempt to intimidate the media into silence."

But as is generally the case when private media monopolies are challenged by progressive governments, the view presented by these powerful corporations and their allies in the United States is one-sided and over-simplified. Ecuador, with a democratic left government, is facing the same challenge faced by all of the left-of-center governments in the region: the private media is dominated by heavily monopolized, often politically partisan, right-wing forces opposed to the progressive economic and social reforms that the electorate voted for. All of these governments have responded to that challenge.

In Argentina, a new media law seeks to break up the media monopoly held by the Clarín Group, which according to press reports controls 60 percent of the media. The Brazilian government created, for the first time in 2007, a federally-launched public TV station. The Bolivian government, which faces perhaps the most hostile media in the hemisphere, has also expanded public media. What all of these governments are doing - although they would not put it that way - is trying to move their media more in the direction of what we have in the United States. That is, a media which is heavily biased toward the interests of the wealthy and the upper classes, but nonetheless adheres to certain journalistic norms that limit the degree to which the media is a direct, partisan, political actor.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/1010104Weisbrot

[Peace Patriot]

1. He's gonna have to work hard to convince me that U.S. media is not "a direct, partisan, political...

actor."

--

"What all of these governments are doing - although they would not put it that way - is trying to move their media more in the direction of what we have in the United States. That is, a media which is heavily biased toward the interests of the wealthy and the upper classes, but nonetheless adheres to certain journalistic norms that limit the degree to which the media is a direct, partisan, political actor."--Mark Wiesbrot

--

I'll go finish reading it and come back and tell you if he succeeded.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Did he convince me? No. A "fairness doctrine" is badly needed here and there--

in both the U.S. and Latin America. That is what he should have argued. Instead, he argued that the U.S. media, for all its bias, is somehow not a direct political actor, and that progressive governments in South America are trying to claw media bias back to THAT position (mere corpo-fascist propaganda, not instigation of riots and coups). I don't think either thing is true--or rather exactly true, deeply true. U.S. media IS a direct political actor. The coups that it supports are just subtler (harder to see) than in Latin America. And Latin American progressives want much more than merely a claw-back to subtle coup-supporting. They want REAL freedom of speech, such as Thomas Jefferson desired (in his proposal that newspapers should receive government subsidies, so that they would NOT be beholden to the rich and to business cartels for funding). I think that there are much stronger arguments for public interest "fairness" laws in both places, and they are equally desperately needed in both places.

Weisbrot--to may astonishment--repeats a common mistake about the people of the U.S. and the Iraq War. Here it is:

"Of course the standards of the U.S. media are a low bar for comparison. After all, this is a country where the major media - by simply repeating official statements without challenge - helped lead us into the Iraq war by convincing a majority of Americans that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11."

Yes, they did convince the majority that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. But they, at the same time, failed to convince the American people that invading Iraq was necessary. Just before the invasion, nearly 60% of the American people opposed that invasion (Feb '03, all polls). So, first of all, that anti-war group had to include MANY people who believed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. About half of that nearly 60% opposed the Iraq invasion outright; the other half would only agree if it were a UN peacekeeping mission (i.e., international consensus that military action was necessary--consensus that the Bushwhacks never achieved). In other words, they didn't trust Bush or the media. The truth is that the Bushwhacks invaded Iraq without the consent of the American people, and in spite of their majority opposition. And furthermore--and I think this is very important--a good many Americans opposed to the Iraq War were able to make fine distinctions such as, 'well, maybe Saddam had something to do with it, but it was probably minor and not cause for the mass slaughter of war.'

This is both a credit to the American people--being able to maintain their powers of discrimination and rational thought, in the midst of media-driven "war fever", and opposing unnecessary and unjust and unilateral war--and it is also a clue to how the Iraq War occurred. It was NOT anybody--Bush or the media--leading us into the Iraq War "by convincing the majority of Americans" about anything, but rather creating a barely plausible narrative as the psyops cover for the INEVITABLE invasion, slaughter of a hundred thousand innocent people and takeover of their oil fields, as well as positioning the U.S. military for more invasions and for permanent occupation of the Middle East.

This was going to happen no matter what the American people thought. The global corporate predators and war profiteers who had seized direct control of the U.S. military through the stolen election of 2000 were going to do this--take Iraq's oil fields and establish a strategic position for invading Iran and dominating the region--no matter what they had to do here to get this done there. That's what the "Patriot Act" was all about. U.S. democracy was nearly dead at this point, and it was dealt the final blow by the Anthrax Congress, during the same period (Oct '02), which appropriated a $3.9 electronic voting boondoggle, by which voting machines were fast-tracked all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by a handful of rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit-recount controls--with not a peep out of the media; with not a peep out of the Democratic Party leadership.

The role of the corpo-fascist media monopolies was NOT to convince anybody of anything, but rather to DEMORALIZE the majority with the ILLUSION that other Americans had gone whacko, goosestepping after Bush and Cheney.

The final blow to U.S. democracy occurred in 2004, when, despite revelations of no WMDs in Iraq, despite revelations of horrendous torture of prisoners, and despite outright treason (outing a CIA counter-proliferation agent), the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--their data all run through one AP laptop to our TV screens--told the LIE that George Bush and Dick Cheney had been re-elected by the American people.

The U.S. corpo-fascist media is not a "direct, partisan, political actor" in the U.S.? I beg to differ. Neither the corpo-fascist media nor our Democratic Party leaders ever questioned 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. And that is the key to it all. Our entire national political establishment--the Pukes, the Demorats, the "military-industrial complex," the New York Times, et al, the alphabet soup (ABCNBCCBSCNNFox), et al, were determined to employ the U.S. military for corporate resource wars no matter what it took, including ripping up the U.S. Constitution, destroying U.S. democracy and bankrupting the federal treasury and the economy unto the 7th generation. And the media is so thick with this political establishment that there is no difference between them.

There has been a similar phenomenon evident in several rightwing coup plots in Latin America--two that failed (Venezuela, Bolivia) and one that succeeded (Honduras). In Venezuela, for instance, RCTV execs hosted the coupsters, were active members of the coup, and utilized their broadcast license to aid the coup with falsified video footage and outright lies (comparable to NYT, AP, et al, promotion of WMD lies and endorsement of two obviously, provably stolen elections). In Venezuela, rightwing troops didn't have to shut any media down (as in Honduras). RCTV and others were all pro-coup (as was the media here, regarding the Bush-Cheney coup). But it is quite interesting what happened in Venezuela. With no reliable information from the media, the people of Venezuela figured things out, passed the word and acted in time to save their democracy. By the time the Bolivia coup attempt occurred, six years later, Bolivia was surrounded with leftist governments (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay) who, along with other leftist governments (Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay), came to Evo Morales' assistance. There, too, as in Venezuela, the people seemed to have a native resistance to corpo-fascist propaganda--partly the result of intense, long term, grass roots organizing. But another important thing had occurred throughout the region--honest, transparent elections--the result of more than a decade's work by many people, groups and institutions, simultaneous with majority grass roots social and labor movements. Venezuelans pioneered resistance to U.S.-backed rightwing coups, all alone. Bolivia was not alone, when the U.S. and rightwing groups tried again.

So, the strategic problems in the Honduran situation--from the U.S. point of view--were: how to defeat transparent elections? how to get rid of a leftist president without seeming to do so? how to set up an 'election' that the rightwing would 'win' and how to sell that "lipstick on a pig" to the world, or, rather, how to narrate a plausible-sounding story about it, to confuse and demoralize the Honduran people and "divide and conquer" international opposition to the coup?

The U.S. corpo-fascist media monopolies were entirely collusive in this process. They are, collectively, the trumpet of the CIA, with no exceptions. They get the CIA line and they promulgate it. It is all the same. For instance, every one of the U.S. corpo-fascist media outlets repeated the same lie about Honduran President Mel Zelaya--that he had tried to change his own term limit. This is provable lie, on its face. He did no such thing. The proposal that he made was for general constitutional and political reform. It had nothing to do with term limits. It could not have extended his term. And all these media whores had to do was READ his simple reform proposal to know this. (It was furthermore mostly the proposal of the labor unions and community groups that he consulted with. He made the proposal on their behalf.) NO MEDIA OUTLET IN THE U.S. ever quoted the proposal nor even just summarized it. That "Big Lie"--common to all--continues to this day: that Mel Zelaya was removed from the country at gunpoint (via the U.S. military base in Honduras!) because he wanted to change his term limit. It. Is. NOT. True. And they are STILL repeating it.

With items like this, you begin to see not just bias, not such corporate "free speech," not such semi-collusion with war and looting by the rich; you begin to see that the global corporate predators and war profiteers who determine U.S. policy also create this delusionary narrative, common to all corpo-fascist media, by which they seek to press upon their viewers, listeners and readers that there is no other way to look at the world, and any thoughts that stray from their view are useless, hopeless and unreal. It doesn't matter what the facts are. You must abandon your devotion to facts and reason because they will not prevail.

Honduras' grass roots movement was more nascent at the time of the recent coup, and, although they got organized and acted swiftly (on Day One, actually), they were unable to stop it because Honduras was too much of a U.S. client state; the Honduran military trained at "the School of the Americas"; with a U.S. military base (used to ferret the elected president out of the country). These latter were critical factors, because all else resembles Venezuela and Bolivia (treasonous media, collusive U.S. embassy, USAID-CIA aid to rightwing groups, etc.) Neither Venezuela nor Bolivia--although infested with U.S. agents--had a U.S. military base (and it is likely that securing that base for future aggression in the region was a prime motive of the Pentagon and the U.S. is aiding the coup). Honduras also had much weaker (more recently elected) leftist governments surrounding it (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala). The Honduran coup immediately shut down all opposition media, suspended all civil rights and began brutalizing and killing anti-coup activists--what both the Venezuelan and Bolivian coups would have done, had they succeeded. The stronger leftist governments in Latin America (Brazil, Venezuela, etc.), and the OAS, though they tried hard, were unable to reverse the coup and it proceeded to a U.S.-supported 'election' under martial law.

The U.S. government does not care in the least that anti-coup activists are being slaughtered in Honduras, as we speak. In fact, they prefer to have fascists in charge killing off the leftists. This has not changed under Barack Obama. And the 'CIA media' concurs. They completely ignore it. The U.S. government and the U.S. media are one and the same. And this is not exactly what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.

The problem here is much, much more serious than media bias. The problem here is that the global corporate predators and war profiteers who rule over us don't have to commit overt rightwing coups to get their way. They already control both the government and the media--and the voting machines!--so that their ability to maintain their delusionary narrative goes without challenge. They can steal elections. They can rip up the Constitution. They can slaughter a million people to steal their oil. They can loot the country blind. They can permit a "liberal" to be elected, to take the blame for these things off the Bushwhacks, then toss him out four years later, and come back with someone worse. They rule. And nobody gets to the White House without their say-so, and without having agreed to their strict parameters on policy, including "no-no" subjects like prosecuting Bushwhacks for blatant war crimes or challenging the 'Defense' budget nor even challenging the insurance industry.

The differences with Latin America are, a) overt coups are still needed to gain rightwing/corp-fascist control in most countries; b) transparent elections make leftist (majorityist) government still possible, and c) there is still a struggle between good government and bad media.

One other item about media and coups: In the Venezuelan coup, the remaining Chavez government officials worked hard to restore the government media channel, to get accurate information to the public. The coup had shut it down. They got it back up and running rather quickly. This was especially important to restoring constitutional order in the immediate crisis and the days following.

Weisbrot has a point--that the leftists and progressives--who are now the great majority of governments in Latin America--want active corpo-fascist media collusion in coup attempts to stop. And since current criminal statutes are not strong enough to handle such treason, they have to make them stronger, to preserve democracy. They cannot have powerful multinational corpo-fascist broadcasters fomenting coups. But they are way ahead of us in seeking real "freedom of speech"--freedom of speech available to everyone, via publicly owned media and regulation of private media to prevent corpo-fascist media monopolies and to create a news media culture with goals of accuracy and fairness. We once had that here. The Reaganites got rid of it--which was the beginning of the corpo-fascist coup within the U.S. media that fully aligned them with the government.

I think Weisbrot, in trying to present the media issues in Latin America in a way that won't be automatically censored by U.S. corpo-fascist (CIA) media, mis-states the situation here, that the U.S. media doesn't collude in rightwing coups. For one thing, it very clearly colludes with CIA policy on rightwing coups in Latin America. And, for another, they don't have to, here. The rightwing coup is built into the government/media system--and cannot be dislodged, except maybe by long, hard, local/state civic work on the transparency and fairness of our election system, such as Latin Americans have done. Latin Americans have elected good leftist leaders all over the region, despite extremely hostile rightwing media. One major key to this is transparent vote counting.