What is the Venezuelan News Media Actually Like?

[Joanne98]

21 Caracas Daily Newspapers, Diverse Community Radio and TV Stations, Disprove the US-Propagated Myths


By Andrew Kennis
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
July 14, 2008


What is the Venezuelan News Media Actually Like?

Listening to accounts by the U.S. news media and to the public postures taken by the Bush administration, one would think that there is no freedom of expression in Venezuela. The impression most U.S. citizens have is that the media is virtually under direct state control. Independent reporting, free from the government’s fiery rhetoric, has been noticeably absent. A careful and sober account of Venezuelan media that focuses on the most basic and uncontroversial facts of what constitutes the Venezuelan media today has been non-existent in mainstream U.S. media (and even in many independent sources as well). Such reporting could present a more accurate picture of the actual situation of freedom of expression in Venezuela.


“Totalitarian censorship”

In light of characterizations by the Bush administration of the Venezuelan media that are too often unquestionably reported and frequently parroted by the U.S. news media, serious concerns of media independence from President Bush’s foreign policy line arise; a comparison between the two goes far to illustrate the serious problem of the lack of media independence.

Public officials in Washington – never great friends of President Chávez – have always seen the media as a key battleground. U.S. legislation has launched and financed significant news propaganda incursions into the Venezuelan media. Representative Connie Mack IV (R-FL) successfully pushed through an amendment in 2005 to a Foreign Relations Reauthorization Bill that provided for 30 minutes of programming every day from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the same government agency that runs Radio Free Europe) to be transmitted over Venezuelan airwaves. Mack remarked at the time, “in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela there is no free press – just state controlled anti-American propaganda.”

Other initiatives have followed, including a 2007 measure that brought $10 million in financial support for Voice of the America to expand its broadcasts in Venezuela. Mack once again railed against the Venezuelan media: “Freedom of the press died in Venezuela on May 27, 2007, when Chavez shut down Radio Caracas Television” (Miami Herald, 06/22/07).

This stance is a familiar one, coming both from Congress and the White House. In a speech to the Organization of American States after the Venezuelan government refused to renew private network Radio Caracas Television’s (RCTV’s) broadcast license last May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience are not a thorn in the side of government … Disagreeing with your government is not unpatriotic and most certainly should not be a crime in any country, especially a democracy.”

The U.S. news media have overwhelmingly parroted such claims from the government. Many of these news accounts came after the controversial RCTV decision, but such coverage has long existed and has been well documented by the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3161.html