Chavez supporters get benefit of media coverage

(Photos from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra)

Jose Ferero from the Washington Post (in a story that I can’t find in the Post, by the way – oops, here it is; h/t VZ News and Views), writes that the anti-Chavez movement is picking up steam;

But press-freedom groups note that the [RCTV television] station has not been officially sanctioned, nor have its owners or managers been charged with conspiracy against the state. Other private stations that were harshly anti-Chávez but have toned down critical coverage avoided the same fate, as communications Minister William Lara readily acknowledged in an interview broadcast Friday on CNN’s Spanish-language service.

Polls show that 65 to 80 percent of Venezuelan respondents disagreed with the government’s decision to end RCTV’s concession, though many were simply upset that they wouldn’t be able to see some of their favorite soap operas.

The widespread dissatisfaction has re-energized an opposition movement that lost much of its momentum after its efforts to recall Chávez were defeated in 2004 and after its decision to boycott parliamentary elections in 2005 left it without representation in the National Assembly.

60-85% is a pretty significant number in anyone’s book. But to read the news reports today, one might believe the opposite is true. Here is all Deutche Welle reports this morning;

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Venezuela’s capital Caracas Saturday in a show of support for President Hugo Chavez. The march follows the president’s controversial closure of an opposition television station, which back in 2002 had openly called for the president’s removal from office. The country’s telecommunications Minister Jesse Chacon said the president was democratizing the country’s broadcast spectrum. The country’s political opposition views the move as a gross violation of press freedoms.

The protest against Chavez last week happened in every major city in Venezuela, but this support for Chavez was concentrated in Caracas – the capitol. DW merely parrots the Chavez line and calls it news. AFP goes a step beyond the German press and counts “hundreds of thousands”;

Hundreds of thousands of President Hugo Chavez’s backers Saturday marched in a show of support for his controversial closure of an opposition television station, now an international scandal.

Supporters of the leftist president marched under his slogan of “democratizing television and radio,” one day after students surprised the government with large anti-Chavez demonstrations demanding freedom of expression.

“Starting today, the (pro-government) counterattack must be maintained across the country,” Chavez rallied the throng, claiming that a “destabilizing maneuver was afoot to carry out a gentle coup” and topple his government. He did not offer details.

“If the Venezuelan oligarchy … does not accept this call to live together in peace that we are making, if it keeps on attacking using the things it still controls, it will keep losing those things one by one,” Chavez warned.

(Editor Note: I noticed APF just changed the story to read “tens of thousands” Odd, huh?)

I guess “Venezuelan oligarchy” is code for “vast right wing conspiracy”. Associated Press toned down the numbers even further;

Earlier Saturday, reggaeton music blared and fireworks crackled as thousands of “Chavistas” gathered at an opposition stronghold in wealthy eastern Caracas before converging with other marches in the capital.

Information Minister Willian Lara said the march would “demonstrate before the world that the non-renewal of (RCTV’s license) … is a democratic conquest,” claiming the private media has been “held ransom by a small economic group.”

A democratic conquest. Get that? When you can silence your opposition, that’s democratic. From the invisible Washington Post story;

Michael Shifter, a senior analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington, D.C., that closely follows Venezuela, said he didn’t think [Chavez attacks on the “oligarchy”] would get much traction this time.

“All of his previous attacks were on the corrupt capitalists, but this goes way beyond that and it touches on Venezuela’s cultural identity,” Shifter said of Chávez. “It’s very hard for him to talk of the rancid oligarchy here. These are university students protesting, not part of the old order.”

If students took to the streets to protest their president silencing the opposition anywhere else in the world, they’d have the support of the media and the Left here in the US. Just like that first picture above – a single man, shirtless, weaponless holding back the tide of government forces while others rush to his aid – would have been on every frontpage and magazine cover as a symbol of the popular stuggle against a totalitarian government, if only it’d been taken in a protest against a more conservative government.

APF went on to say that the incident may have isolated Chavez somewhat from anothe Leftist ally;

However, the struggle now jeopardizes relations with at least one of Chavez’s fellow leftist leaders in South America.

Brazil’s Senate formally requested on Wednesday that Chavez reconsider his decision to close RCTV.

Chavez retorted, “The Brazilian Congress should worry about Brazil’s problems,” and accused it of being Washington’s “subordinate.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended Brazilian lawmakers and told Chavez to mind his own business, a position welcomed in the Brazilian press.

Lula “did what he had to do to defend Brazil’s independent and democratic principles,” Folha de Sao Paulo editorialized Saturday.

Ratcheting up the pressure, Lula asked his foreign ministry to call in Venezuela’s Ambassador to Brazil to have him explain Chavez’s response.

I guess we all have these little victories to cling to for awhile. RDTV (India) published this AP story;

”We don’t accept interferences from anybody about internal Venezuelan matters. Absolutely from nobody,” Chavez said to thousands of red-clad supporters on Saturday.

He also warned that if the ”bourgeoisie of Venezuela” continued their undermining of the ”Bolivarian people of Venezuela, they will continue losing their possessions one by one. One by one,” he said to a roaring crowd.

Large, sometimes violent protests by students warning of a threat to freedom of expression erupted after his decision to take RCTV off the air.

Chavez says the outcry is being fomented by government opponents trying to topple his administration.

He has warned other broadcasters, radio stations and newspapers covering the protests of unspecified sanctions if they continue to ”incite” instability.

Saturday’s warning took that a step further, warning the private media he could abruptly end their licenses at any moment. 

He’s threatening the middleclass and the remaining private broadcasters. We probably can’t trust much that comes out of Venezuela in the near future.

The US Left has been mostly silent on Venezuela. Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to Chavez announcing her “concern”,  but the Daily Kos had a long post by heathlander describing the Leftist party line (I won’t link to it because Kos doesn’t need my comparably pitiful traffic) in case anyone is tempted stray from the plantation over this loss of civil rights for Venezuelans;

RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected.

So why didn’t Chavez prosecute those billionaires and businessmen five years ago after he defeated this supposed “coup attempt”? Why did he just let their license expire instead of taking the case through his administrative law judges and jerking their license with proof that they had supported the coup? In our system (admittedly not the Venezuelan system), we don’t deprive citizens of their property without their day in court. The Left constantly tells us that we should use our system of justice and rights to other nations’ citizens (as in Guantanamo) so why aren’t they for imposing our legal protections on Venezuela? If George W. Bush shut down a TV network comparable to RCTV, or let their license expire without a hearing, and defended his actions by claiming the network had plotted his demise, the Left would be apoplectic. So why doesn’t the Left care about this particular group of brown people?

Well, that’s because Chavez is the next best hope for the Left to re-establish a successful communist dictatorship, since all they’ve had up to this point is Cuba and North Korea – two miserable failures that are starving their inhabitants and are punchlines in more jokes than Brittany Spears. Chavez has the benefit of petro-dollars to finance his workers’ paradise. Although I don’t understand why a truly socialist society would need money – isn’t that th whole point of socialism?

And besides we all know who’s behind those rich media guys in Venezuela;

 

The good news, according to VivirLatino is that RCTV is still broadcasting – on the internet.

I’ve been getting email from readers asking why I’m so focused on this story – because I think we need to support this anti-Chavez movement until they are successful and they get their government back. It’s a cinch that our own government will do nothing, given our history in the region and the fragility of our reputation. Latin America has been so inundated with anti-US propaganda for decades (I’ve watched and read alot of it while studying modern history there and in my travels) that anything we do, as a government, would be labeled “imperialist”. We should encourage Venezuelans to restore Venezuela themselves, though – they have the power and the wherewithall to accomplish this. They just need to know that we support them.

Category: Foreign Policy, Hugo Chavez, Media