Chavez TV Channel Aims to Be Latin American Voice

[Judi Lynn]

Chavez TV Channel Aims to Be Latin American Voice
Tue Apr 12, 2005 8:26 PM ET

By Pascal Fletcher
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Three years ago, private Venezuelan television stations chose not to cover a military-civilian uprising that rescued President Hugo Chavez from a short-lived coup.

Now firmly back in power, the leftist leader will launch a state-run regional TV channel this summer to break what he calls a conspiracy by international and local commercial networks to silence and distort news from Latin America.

Telesur, a new 24-hour Spanish-language satellite station formed by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay, is due to go live in July or August, its director general said on Tuesday.
(snip)

Aharonian, a Uruguayan journalist who has worked in Venezuela for years, said the new Caracas-based station will offer an alternative voice to U.S. and European broadcasters in Spanish like CNN En Espanol or Spain's TVE.
(snip/...)

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[cprise]

1. Mistake?

I support Chavez and his reforms, but he should work to convert state-run media into license-funded public television and radio.

The exception is, of course, when the state-run broadcaster has a narrowly-defined purpose (such as covering the space program... or perhaps covering a crisis in international relations?)

[bemildred]

2. Who can say?

I think alternative points of view are a good thing.
Let's see what they make of it, I mean al Jazeera has been
a useful addition.

[w4rma]

3. The BBC is a better comparison than Al Jazeera (nt)

[bemildred]

4. OK, the BBC then. nt

[cprise]

5. Just what I was thinking of.

The (BBC) public license model is a way to get across a more moderate, populist point-of-view.

Of course, we also lack that in the US. Our "public" broadcasters run mainly on commercials and charity from the well-off.

[redqueen]

6. Agreed - I want public TV here!

:argh:

[cprise]

8. Me too.

In general though Democrats want Gore and Soros and swoop down and create a "liberal" news corporation. They want a highly dramatic commercial solution that is bound to turn around and bite our heads off, and they cannot think outside of the box.

As for what Gore actually did with his media venture, 'America's Funniest News Clips' might not have a positive effect on our media culture.

[redqueen]

9. Is that what he did?

Geez...

Nothing good ever started from the higher-ups... everything wonderful has always been started from the grassroots, from the people. Women's Suffrage, Labor Laws, the FDA... all started because the people rose up and got things going themselves.

[cprise]

10. LOL

It's not called "Americas Funniest News Clips" :) I was being sarcastic.


From NewsWeek:
"Current, which will formally launch in August, plans to harness the growing ranks of creative young filmmakers armed with cheap digital video cameras and PC editing software, who are now uploading their clips like crazy onto the Web. The network hopes these digital auteurs will submit material and plans to splice, dice and mingle the best clips with its own footage, interspersed with commentary from hip on-air VJs. Segments—which the Current folks are calling “pods”—will run to six minutes in length, perfect for young adults with attention spans that don’t last much longer than the average music video. Subject matter will range from office life to fashion to faith—and presumably whatever other surprises the young filmmakers serve up. At the top and bottom of every hour, Google, a partner, will provide the equivalent of a news break, presenting the top search terms for subjects such as celebrities and dating (presumably filtering out the inevitable obscene searches.) "


My take: Who cares if the clips come from the great unwashed? They are still filtered according to shareholder (commercial) interests.

[PeaceProgProsp]

11. "license-funded"? You mean like a flat fee?

[donsu]

7. I wish Telesur well and hope they have an online english version

and I applaud central amer. and south amer. for fighting back.

[Judi Lynn]

12. I don't know how ANYONE can say Venezuelan media did its job

as it agitated continuously against Hugo Chavez, organizing marches, attributing high seriousness to them, then going completely silent when the Venezuelan masses learned Chavez had been abducted from office, through their own grapevines, and swarmed into the streets.

It's inconceivable anyone could countenance this.

Caracas's mayor, Alfredo Peña CLOSED a small public station which was NOT controlled by the right-wing media during the coup:

During the ephemeral Carmona government, the state-run Venezolana de Televisión was shut down, and the private TV stations refused to broadcast the Apr. 13 popular uprising, which Chávez spokespersons repeatedly note as ”proof that the ones who most violate freedoms of expression are the opposition.”

The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders issued a statement exhorting Peña to give an explanation for the Catia TV closure.

”We ask you to explain your reasons for closing the premises of Catia TV and at the same time we remind you that, whatever they are, they could not justify forcing this station off the air,” wrote the organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard.

Provea, one of Venezuela's leading human rights groups, called the closure a ”denial of the rights to freedom of expression and information consecrated in the constitution,” and demanded that the city government ”immediately restore these legal guarantees.”

The Community Media Association added its voice to the demands and declared, ”Mayor Peña is depriving the working class communities of western Caracas of the right to inform themselves and express themselves independently.”

”The one who has shut down a media outlet is not President Chávez but rather one of his most ferocious opponents,” said the Association.
(snip/...)

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19274

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A recent Human Rights Watch report, which was harshly criticized by supporters of Venezuela's 'Bolivarian Revolution', said that "there are few obvious limits on free expression in Venezuela. The country's print and audiovisual media operate without restrictions." Two months after the report was published, on July 14, one of the country's audiovisual media outlets came up against a rather serious restriction-it was shut down and its equipment confiscated. The outlet in question is called CatiaTV, but it was not shut down by the Chavez government but by the mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Pena, who is an opponent of Chavez.

CatiaTV was an experiment in genuine community television. It was started by a group of people in Catia, a vast and extremely poor borough of Caracas, who thought to film one of the community's events to show it to the community. It gave poor people the opportunity to make their own programs, about themselves, for themselves. In April 2002, when the coup against the Chavez government took place, workers in CatiaTV were instrumental in helping to get the state television channel, Channel 8, back online, breaking the monopoly of misinformation of the private television networks and facilitating the reversal of the coup.

Reporters Without Borders (which did protest against the closing of CatiaTV), demonstrating a disappointing lack of understanding of the Venezuelan media situation, said that reporters there were "caught between an authoritarian president and an intolerant media." The private networks are advocates of a coup, call supporters of Chavez 'monkeys', and distort information to a remarkable degree. But the people can't rely solely on the state media. This is exactly what makes community media like CatiaTV so important. It is also why Alfredo Pena shut it down.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=3993