Venezuelans pour into streets to mourn Hugo Chavez

[Judi Lynn]

158. You identify with "any thinking person"? Probably not, of course.

She, as with other DU'ers, is fully aware of Globo's part in the filthy coup of the Venezuelan President.

You are betting on the hope she is simply on budgeted time, the way most of us are, and doesn't really have all day to plunge into collecting links for you to review and evaluate, as if surveying a tray of offered pastries for your snacking pleasure.

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Globovisión vs democracy

Since 1998, Globovisión has relentlessly opposed the democratic government of Hugo Chavez. In April of 2002, the broadcast network actively participated in the coup d’état by Pedro Carmona Estanga. In any other country in the world, Globovisión would have been closed and its leaders sentenced to long prison sentences. But the Supreme Court, controlled at that time by the opposition, refused to recognize the coup and explained the overthrow as merely a “power vacuum.”

Since then, the channel has multiplied its calls to insurrection. [3] In May of 2007, Globovisión encouraged the murder of President Chavez by manipulating images and sending subliminal messages. On the program "Aló, Ciudadano", Marcel Granier, the director of another channel that strongly criticizes Chavez, RCTV, was interviewed while simultaneously displaying images of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in May 1981. Globovisión could not explain why it broadcast images of the attempted assassination during a program dealing with the non-renewal of RCTV’s license. [4] Several semiotic experts were categorical about the incident: “It urged the murder of the President.” [5] In France, such actions would have resulted in the incarceration of the reporters as well as the company’s owners.

Globovisión’s journalists and newscasters also amplified their defamatory rhetoric towards the government using words like “dictatorship” and “tyranny” to justify calls for civic disobedience and acts of violence, something that would be unimaginable in the West. [6]

http://www.voltairenet.org/article160744.html

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HOW HATE MEDIA INCITED THE COUP AGAINST THE PRESIDENT

Venezuela’s press power

Never even in Latin American history has the media been so directly involved in a political coup. Venezuela’s ’hate media’ controls 95% of the airwaves and has a near-monopoly over newsprint, and it played a major part in the failed attempt to overthrow the president, Hugo Chávez, in April. Although tensions in the country could easily spill into civil war, the media is still directly encouraging dissident elements to overthrow the democratically elected president - if necessary by force.

by Maurice Lemoine

"We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you." In Caracas, on 11 April 2002, just a few hours before the temporary overthrow of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez congratulated journalist Ibéyiste Pacheco live on Venevision television. Twenty minutes earlier, when Pacheco had begun to interview a group of rebel officers, she could not resist admitting, conspiratorially, that she had long had a special relationship with them.

At the same time, in a live interview from Madrid, another journalist, Patricia Poleo, also seemed well informed about the likely future development of "spontaneous events". She announced on the Spanish channel TVE: "I believe the next president is going to be Pedro Carmona." Chávez, holed up in the presidential palace, was still refusing to step down.

After Chávez came to power in 1998, the five main privately owned channels - Venevisión, Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), Globovisión and CMT - and nine of the 10 major national newspapers, including El Universal, El Nacional, Tal Cual, El Impulso, El Nuevo País, and El Mundo, have taken over the role of the traditional political parties, which were damaged by the president’s electoral victories. Their monopoly on information has put them in a strong position. They give the opposition support, only rarely reporting government statements and never mentioning its large majority, despite that majority’s confirmation at the ballot box. They have always described the working class districts as a red zone inhabited by dangerous classes of ignorant people and delinquents. No doubt considering them unphotogenic, they ignore working class leaders and organisations.

Their investigations, interviews and commentaries all pursue the same objective: to undermine the legitimacy of the government and to destroy the president’s popular support. "In aesthetic terms, this revolutionary government is a cesspit," was the delicate phrase used by the evening paper Tal Cual. Its editor, Teodoro Petkoff, is a keen opponent of Chávez. Petkoff is a former Marxist guerrilla who became a neo-liberal and a pro-privatisation minister in the government of rightwing president Rafael Caldera. The Chávez government is not, of course, above criticism. It makes mistakes, and the civilian and military personnel who surround it are tainted by corruption. But the government was democratically elected and still has the backing of the majority. It can also be credited with successes, nationally and internationally.

http://mondediplo.com/2002/08/10venezuela

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Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 05:39 PM PST.

The Myth that Hugo Chávez Controls Venezuela’s Media

There's a reason why Americans believe that Chávez controls the Venezuelan media; all the American media continuously publishes stories about media suppression undertaken by the Chávez government. (For examples, see here, here, and here.) These stories are not false in the sense that they describe events which actually happened (i.e. Chávez has taken action against anti-Chávez network RCTV). But they are very misleading.

Let's take a look at television. Venezuelan television is dominated by four networks: Venevisión, Televen, Globovisión, and Venezolana de Televisión (VTV). Of these four networks, Venevisión and Televen are moderately anti-Chávez, Globovisión is extremely anti-Chávez, and VTV is extremely pro-Chávez. Venevisión and Televen hold 60% of the TV audience in Venezuela. VTV appears to hold only 6% of Venezuelans.

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Indeed, it seems that the Venezuelan media played a major role in supporting the failed 2002 coup d'état against Chávez. Coup plotters collaborated with Venezuelan media figures before the coup. The media refused to show statements by officials condemning the coup d'état. When the coup d'état failed, the private Venezuelan networks refused to broadcast the news that Chávez had returned to power.

~snip~
But one's personal dislike of Hugo Chávez has nothing to do with the bias of Venezuela's media. It's fair to say that, on balance, Venezuela's media is biased against Hugo Chávez. Unfortunately, too many journalists writing in too many American media sources have let their dislike of Chávez blind them to the truth. This has left too many intelligent Americans badly misinformed.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/29/1174713/-The-Myth-that-Hugo-Ch-vez-Controls-Venezuela-s-Media

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Wikileaks Cables Reveal U.S. Embassy Works with Venezuelan Private Media
By Tamara Pearson - Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, September 6th 2011 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – The U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, met with Venezuelan private media companies El Nacional, Globovision, and the Cisneros Group, to discuss their political content with them and El Nacional asked the U.S embassy for funding, according to cables written by the U.S embassy in Caracas and published by Wikileaks.

Duddy met with the 2002 coup supporting channel, Globovision, and with private newspaper El Nacional on 17 and 19 February 2010, and documented the meeting in a cable written that month and released by Wikileaks on 30 August 2011, classified as secret and titled, “Globovision Owners Acknowledge Defeat: El Nacional on the Ropes?”

El Nacional told the embassy that it had allegedly lost “advertising revenue from companies that had either been nationalised or been threatened by the (Venezuelan government)” and asked “the Ambassador whether the U.S. could provide (it with financial) assistance.” The newspaper said it was reaching “the end of its financial rope” and predicted that it could be out of business by April of that year (2010).

The El Nacional representative (whose name is blacked out) said El Universal had also lost advertising revenues, “over 14%, with the recent nationalisation of Exito (supermarket chain)”.

The U.S embassy cable reads, “To keep El Nacional alive, XXXXXXXXXXXX asked the Ambassador whether the Embassy knew of services of private financing they could approach outside the country, or failing that, if the USG [U.S. government] could be persuaded to help.”

El Nacional currently still circulates on a daily basis.

A Globovision representative, their name also blacked out in the cable, alleged that Venezuelan government officials had pressured them to “tone down Globovision's strongly anti-Chavez orientation” and talked about “buying time” until the National Assembly elections (which took place in September last year), saying “If Chavez wins, we are all gone.” The pro-Chavez party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, did win a majority in those elections, and Globovision remains fully on air.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6469

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During the coup in April 2002 almost all of Venezuela’s private media actively participated in overthrowing the democratically elected Chávez. This included manipulating footage to make it appear as though Chávez supporters were responsible for the killing of innocent civilians, and airing cartoons rather than covering the mass mobilization that brought Chávez back to power. In fact, the day after the coup on the opposition station Venevision, a number of coup supporters appeared, with one explicitly thanking the media, including Globovision and other private stations for their role in overthrowing Chávez (footage of which is included in “South of the Border”.)

Globovision is frequently referred to as the last independent television station that is critical of Chávez and, though the LA Times doesn’t state this explicitly, it does leave the reader with the sense that Globovision is the last remaining independent station. However, there are a number of other independent stations both local and national and these account for a much larger share of the overall market than the country’s state owned television and radio. Nationally there is Venevisión and Televen, for example.

http://southoftheborderdoc.com/la-times-accurately-describes-venezuelan-tv-station-as-obviously-slanted-with-no-pretense-of-impartiality/

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Venezuela's Media Coup
By Naomi Klein - February 13th, 2003

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Venezuela's private television stations are owned by wealthy families with serious financial 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 with many top US brands-from AOL and Coca-Cola to Pizza Hut and Playboy-becoming a gatekeeper to the Latin American market. Cisneros is also a tireless proselytizer for continental free trade, telling the world, as he did in a 1999 profile in LatinCEO magazine, that "Latin America is now fully committed to free trade, and fully committed to globalization.?? As a continent it has made a choice." But with Latin American voters choosing politicians like Chavez, that has been looking like false advertising, selling a consensus that doesn't exist.

All of this helps explain why, in the days leading up to the April coup, Venevision, RCTV, Globovision and Televen replaced regular programming with relentless anti-Chavez speeches, interrupted only for commercials calling on viewers to take to the streets: "Not one step backwards. Out! Leave Now!" The ads were sponsored by the oilindustry, but the stations carried them free, as "public service announcements."

They went further: On the night of the coup, Cisneros' station played host to 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 openly rejoiced at news of Chavez's "resignation," when pro-Chavez forces mobilized for his return a total 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 actively 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. Mexico, Argentina, and France condemned the coup and refused to recognize the new government. RCTV knew but didn't tell.

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2003/02/venezuelas-media-coup

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