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Chavez cancels opposition TV station's license
ReplyDeleteby Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times Jan. 6, 2007
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's decision not to renew the license of his nation's largest and oldest television network, a frequent critic of his policies, drew a rebuke Friday from the Organization of American States.
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said in a statement that Chavez acted in an arbitrary manner in yanking the license of RCTV, which began operations in 1953 and has the largest viewership of any network in Venezuela.
"The closing of a mass communications outlet is a rare step in the
history of our hemisphere and has no precedent in the recent decades of democracy," Insulza wrote, adding he hoped "this decision will be revised."
Chavez's "adoption of an administrative measure to close a news outlet gives the appearance of a form of censorship against freedom of expression and at the same time serves as a warning against other news organizations leading them to limit their actions at the risk of facing the same fate," Insulza said in the statement.
The OAS objection follows similar condemnations by news media freedom groups, including Reporters Without Borders and the Inter-American Press Association.
Chavez announced the decision Dec. 28 at a military academy in Caracas, saying RCTV owners would have to "pack your bags, turn out the lights."
He accused the network of promoting the coup in April 2002 that briefly knocked him from power, and of committing unspecified ethical lapses. The Ministry of Communications and Information later specified that the license would not be renewed when it expired in May.
In a radio interview Thursday, Chavez, who was re-elected last month in a landslide, said the decision was "irrevocable" and was made because RCTV "didn't pass the test to receive a renewal of a concession from a state that is serious, responsible, committed and respectful of the people."
RCTV General Manager Marcel Granier denied that his network had promoted the coup and merely covered it as a news event. He said in an interview that the network executives had not been presented with a formal notice or complaint that they could contest in court or at a public hearing.
"The only coup plotter is Chavez, who as everyone knows tried to overthrow the government in 1992, years before he was elected," Granier said. "We have a democratic tradition and we have been a model of that tradition.
"Not renewing our license is like President Bush one day announcing that NBC is going off the air because it was involved in a conspiracy against the United States," Granier said.
Orlando Ochoa, a risk analyst and economic consultant in Caracas, said that shutting down the nation's most popular TV network would "increase social polarization and destroy harmony at a time when Chavez has such a mandate to fight crime, inflation and eliminate corruption."
"Yes, RCTV had a critical attitude toward Chavez during the attempted coup more than four years ago, but so did all of the other big stations in Venezuela," Ochoa said. "The difference is that others have become more bland while RCTV maintains its attitude."
RCTV is a privately owned company whose largest shareholders are the Bottome and Phelps families. The network produces news and prime time programming, including 1,000 hours of telenovelas, or soap operas, each year. It owns 40 radio and television stations across Venezuela.
Granier said RCTV had "earned a place in Venezuelan society and we want to continue working as we have done." Asked whether the owners would sell if appeals failed, Granier said the market might be limited.
"Who is going to want to buy such a business in a country where there is a president in a military uniform saying which media can exist and which can't?" Granier said. "People want to invest in a country where there is rule of law."
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
Commentary by Phil H.:
In any other country (notably our own bastion of 'democracy' in the US), a television network that openly engaged in the same sort of agitation against their democratically-elected president as RCTV did would find its entire staff, from mailroom to CEO, imprisoned for treason.
It speaks well of Chavez' character that his only action is to deny them permission to continue broadcasting lies, while his very life is at stake.
I can easily imagine Fox News trying sh*t like this against a Democratic president, but even today I can't believe they'd get away with it. But what do you suppose would happen to a US network that engaged in these practices against George W. Bush? Do you think they'd merely lose their jobs?
RCTV was the first to broadcast the false claim that Chavez supporters were shooting at opposition demonstrators, which then served as a justification for high level generals to declare their disobedience to the government, also on RCTV.
RCTV then had exclusive interviews with coup plotters and the talk show host Napoleon Bravo read Chavez's supposed resignation letter on RCTV. Later it turned out that the letter was never signed by Chavez and that he had actually not resigned at all, but had been taken into custody.
When the coup began to falter and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in support of Chavez, RCTV refused to provide any news coverage of the developments and switched from 24-hour news coverage to the broadcasting of old cartoons and movies instead.
Other reasons Chavez and his supporters refer to RCTV as a coup-plotting channel are because it also supported the December 2002 shutdown of the oil industry that was designed to force Chavez from office. At the time RCTV (along with Globovision) gave free advertising time to the opposition, broadcasting these in lieu of commercial advertising, urging citizens to support the so-called general strike. Also, during the August 2004 presidential recall referendum, RCTV refused to accept pro-Chavez advertisements.
The coup against Chavez on April 11, 2002 is unique in history, as the entire event was filmed from inside the presidential palace by documentary filmmakers who happened to be in Caracas to make a movie about Chavez' populist Bolivarian revolution. Their film can be watched on-line for free, and is available for download on bit torrent sites in higher resolution formats.
It's really an amazing look inside the machinations of the US and Venezuelan elite against Chavez. After seeing it, you'll be amazed that he let RCTV off the hook at all.