The media against democracy
Venezuela highlights the threat to freedom from corporate control
Naomi Klein
Tuesday February 18, 2003
The Guardian
Poor Endy Chavez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Magallanes, one of Venezuela's big baseball teams. Every time he starts to bat, the TV sportscasters start with the jokes: "Here comes Chavez. No, not the pro-Cuban dictator Chavez, the other Chavez." Or "this Chavez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people".
In Venezuela, even sports commentators are enlisted in the commercial media's open bid to oust the elected government of Hugo Chavez. Andres Izarra, a Venezuelan TV journalist, says that the campaign has done so much damage to true information that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. "I think their licences should be revoked," he says.
It's the sort of pronouncement one has come to expect from Hugo Chavez, known for nicknaming the stations "the four horsemen of the apocalypse". Izarra is harder to dismiss. A made-for-TV type he became news production manager for Venezuela's highest rated news programme.
On April 13 2002, the day after businessman Pedro Carmona briefly seized power, Izarra quit. Ever since, he has talked out against the threat posed to democracy when the media abandons journalism and pours itself into winning a war being waged over oil.
Venezuela's private TV stations are owned by wealthy families with stakes in defeating Chavez. Venevision, the most-watched network, is owned by Gustavo Cisneros, a mogul dubbed the "joint venture king" by the New York Post. The Cisneros Group has partnered many US brands - from AOL and Coca-Cola to Pizza Hut and Playboy - becoming a gatekeeper to the Latin American market.
Cisneros proselytises for free trade, telling the world, as he did in 1999, that "Latin America is now fully committed to free trade, and fully committed to globalisation ... As a continent it has made a choice". With voters choosing politicians like Chavez, that looks like false advertising.
Before the April coup, Venevision, RCTV, Globovision and Televen replaced regular programming with anti-Chavez speeches, interrupted by commercials calling on viewers to take to the streets. The ads were sponsored by the oil industry, but were carried as "public service announcements".
On the night of the coup, Cisneros's station hosted meetings among the plotters, including Carmona. The president of Venezuela's broadcasting chamber co-signed the decree dissolving the elected national assembly. And, while the stations rejoiced at news of Chavez's "resignation", when pro-Chavez forces mobilised for his return a news blackout was imposed.
Izarra says he received clear instructions: "No information on Chavez, his followers, his ministers, and all others that could in any way be related to him." He watched with horror as his bosses suppressed breaking news. Izarra says that on the day of the coup, RCTV had a report from a US affiliate that Chavez had not resigned, but had been kidnapped and jailed. It didn't make the news.
When Chavez finally returned to the Miraflores palace, the stations gave up on news entirely. On one of the most important days in Venezuela's history, they aired Pretty Woman. "We had a reporter in Miraflores and knew that it had been retaken by the Chavistas," Izarra says. "[But] the information blackout stood. That's when ... I decided to leave."
The situation hasn't improved. During the recent strike organised by the oil industry, the stations broadcast an average of 700 pro-strike advertisements every day. Chavez has decided to go after the TV stations in earnest, with an investigation into violations of broadcast standards and a new set of regulations. "Don't be surprised if we start shutting down television stations," he said in January.
The threat has sparked condemnations from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. And there is reason for concern: the media war in Venezuela is bloody, with attacks on both pro- and anti-Chavez media outlets. But attempts to regulate the media aren't an "attack on press freedom", as CPJ claimed - quite the opposite.
Venezuela's media, including state TV, needs controls to ensure balance. Some of Chavez's proposals overstep these bounds. But it is absurd to treat Chavez as the principal threat to a free press. That honour goes to the media owners. This has been lost on groups entrusted to defend press freedom, still stuck in a paradigm in which all journalists want to tell the truth and all threats come from nasty politicians and angry mobs.
We need defenders of a free press at the moment - not just in Venezuela. It isn't the only country where a war is being waged over oil, where media owners have become inseparable from the forces clamouring for regime change and where the opposition finds itself erased by the nightly news. But in the US, unlike in Venezuela, the media and the government are on the same side.
Venezuela highlights the threat to freedom from corporate control
Naomi Klein
Tuesday February 18, 2003
The Guardian
Poor Endy Chavez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Magallanes, one of Venezuela's big baseball teams. Every time he starts to bat, the TV sportscasters start with the jokes: "Here comes Chavez. No, not the pro-Cuban dictator Chavez, the other Chavez." Or "this Chavez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people".
In Venezuela, even sports commentators are enlisted in the commercial media's open bid to oust the elected government of Hugo Chavez. Andres Izarra, a Venezuelan TV journalist, says that the campaign has done so much damage to true information that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. "I think their licences should be revoked," he says.
It's the sort of pronouncement one has come to expect from Hugo Chavez, known for nicknaming the stations "the four horsemen of the apocalypse". Izarra is harder to dismiss. A made-for-TV type he became news production manager for Venezuela's highest rated news programme.
On April 13 2002, the day after businessman Pedro Carmona briefly seized power, Izarra quit. Ever since, he has talked out against the threat posed to democracy when the media abandons journalism and pours itself into winning a war being waged over oil.
Venezuela's private TV stations are owned by wealthy families with stakes in defeating Chavez. Venevision, the most-watched network, is owned by Gustavo Cisneros, a mogul dubbed the "joint venture king" by the New York Post. The Cisneros Group has partnered many US brands - from AOL and Coca-Cola to Pizza Hut and Playboy - becoming a gatekeeper to the Latin American market.
Cisneros proselytises for free trade, telling the world, as he did in 1999, that "Latin America is now fully committed to free trade, and fully committed to globalisation ... As a continent it has made a choice". With voters choosing politicians like Chavez, that looks like false advertising.
Before the April coup, Venevision, RCTV, Globovision and Televen replaced regular programming with anti-Chavez speeches, interrupted by commercials calling on viewers to take to the streets. The ads were sponsored by the oil industry, but were carried as "public service announcements".
On the night of the coup, Cisneros's station hosted meetings among the plotters, including Carmona. The president of Venezuela's broadcasting chamber co-signed the decree dissolving the elected national assembly. And, while the stations rejoiced at news of Chavez's "resignation", when pro-Chavez forces mobilised for his return a news blackout was imposed.
Izarra says he received clear instructions: "No information on Chavez, his followers, his ministers, and all others that could in any way be related to him." He watched with horror as his bosses suppressed breaking news. Izarra says that on the day of the coup, RCTV had a report from a US affiliate that Chavez had not resigned, but had been kidnapped and jailed. It didn't make the news.
When Chavez finally returned to the Miraflores palace, the stations gave up on news entirely. On one of the most important days in Venezuela's history, they aired Pretty Woman. "We had a reporter in Miraflores and knew that it had been retaken by the Chavistas," Izarra says. "[But] the information blackout stood. That's when ... I decided to leave."
The situation hasn't improved. During the recent strike organised by the oil industry, the stations broadcast an average of 700 pro-strike advertisements every day. Chavez has decided to go after the TV stations in earnest, with an investigation into violations of broadcast standards and a new set of regulations. "Don't be surprised if we start shutting down television stations," he said in January.
The threat has sparked condemnations from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. And there is reason for concern: the media war in Venezuela is bloody, with attacks on both pro- and anti-Chavez media outlets. But attempts to regulate the media aren't an "attack on press freedom", as CPJ claimed - quite the opposite.
Venezuela's media, including state TV, needs controls to ensure balance. Some of Chavez's proposals overstep these bounds. But it is absurd to treat Chavez as the principal threat to a free press. That honour goes to the media owners. This has been lost on groups entrusted to defend press freedom, still stuck in a paradigm in which all journalists want to tell the truth and all threats come from nasty politicians and angry mobs.
We need defenders of a free press at the moment - not just in Venezuela. It isn't the only country where a war is being waged over oil, where media owners have become inseparable from the forces clamouring for regime change and where the opposition finds itself erased by the nightly news. But in the US, unlike in Venezuela, the media and the government are on the same side.
