What is the Venezuelan News Media Actually Like?

What is the Venezuelan News Media Actually Like?
August 4th 2008, by Andrew Kennis - Narco News
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.

Typical of opinions on the RCTV decision was that of syndicated columnist Miguel Perez, in an op-ed published in the Chicago Sun-Times and other papers. Perez called the license denial “totalitarian censorship” and a clear example of “censoring the opposition in the media” (01/09/07). A Washington Times staff editorial wrote that Chavez’s RCTV decision should be marked as nothing less than “the return of the authoritarian left” (06/08/07).

The coverage revealed confusion about some of the basic issues in the RCTV license non-renewal. The Washington Post, one of the most influential dailies in the U.S., irresponsibly included quotes about non-existent legal reforms in the leading paragraphs of one article. “The government is trying to change the laws and indoctrinate the population,” read a quote from a protesting college student and Venezuelan expatriate (06/16/07). However, no law was changed by not renewing the network’s license. Legal Reforms in the early 1990s bestowed this responsibility on the Venezuelan executive branch (a fact rarely cited in mainstream accounts).

News reports published in the U.S. sometimes contradicted themselves with conflicting facts and unquestioned characterizations. In an analysis from the Houston Chronicle, one of the longer and more comprehensive think-pieces on the RCTV issue, Chávez’s actions were described as a “frontal assault on freedom of the press.” In the same piece, it was interestingly admitted toward the end of the article that, “RCTV and other stations … are owned by some of Venezuela’s wealthiest families [and] began playing an overt political role” following Chavez’s initial landside electoral victory in 1998. Further noted, was the fact that “the Chavez government has the legal right not to renew RCTV’s license,” characterizations that would seemingly clash with the unquestionably reported “frontal assault” description that led the article (Houston Chronicle, 05/27/07).

Polls supposedly revealing deep opposition and “widespread disagreement” to Chavez’s decision were routinely cited out of context (Romero, NYT, 05/27/07), often without any reference to the fact that most, “viewers in [at least one oft-cited] survey expressed little concern about losing access to RCTV’s anti-Chavez news programs … [and] instead … complained about missing the station’s soap operas and game shows – like the Venezuelan version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’” This latter piece of information, however, was a buried item in and of itself and appeared toward the end of the article (Houston Chronicle, 5/27/07).

To be sure, the RCTV “closure” is a complex one, and there are many different perspectives that should be presented. But the issue never received the subtle and careful treatment it deserved in U.S. media coverage (see FAIR, for excellent coverage for more on this point, 11-12/06a, and related issues on U.S. press coverage of Venezuela: 05/25/07; 01-02/08; 11-12/06b; 04/07; 01-02/07.) More importantly, the obsessive focus on the RCTV issue effectively shut out any substantial attention to a key question that would have gone far in settling many of the points of disagreement in that debate.