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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOp-Ed on Venezuela Slips Past NYT Factcheckers
http://fair.org/home/op-ed-on-venezuela-slips-past-nyt-factcheckers/Krauze's thesis (a tired one, but very popular with Venezuelan and Cuban right-wingers in South Florida) is that Venezuela has not only followed "the Cuban model," but has recently outdone Cuba in moving Venezuela further along a socialist path even as Cuba enacts economic reforms. This idea is not merely an oversimplification--as it might appear to the casual observer of Latin American politics--but is largely misleading. To bolster his case, Krauze--a prominent Mexican writer and publisher--includes numerous false statements and errors, which should have been caught by the Times' factcheckers.
Krauze begins by claiming that the Venezuelan government, first under President Hugo Chávez and then his successor Nicolás Maduro, has taken control over the media. Chávez "accumulated control over the organs of government and over much of the information media: radio, television and the press," we are told, and then Maduro "took over the rest of Venezuelan television."
A simple factcheck shows this to be false. The majority of media outlets in Venezuela--including television--continue to be privately owned; further, the private TV audience dwarfs the number of viewers watching state TV. A 2010 study of Venezuelan television found that as of September 2010, Venezuelan state TV channels had just a 5.4 percent audience share. Of the other 94.6 percent of the audience, 61.4 percent were watching privately owned television channels, and 33.1 percent were watching paid TV.
"slips past?" Maybe they just didn't want to catch the "errors".
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)A favorite source for those who still insist that freedom of speech in Venezuela is as thriving as ever is this BBC report (quoting the Communication Ministry), which states that only 5 percent of media outlets are owned by the state. The rest are in private hands, the argument goes, implying theyre therefore free to criticize the government.
Even if we disregard the well-founded fear of retaliation that causes private TV stations like Venevisión and Televén to sanitize their newscasts and keep critical political content to a minimum, this is unconvincing, because the government has an ace in the hole: it can force all radio and TV outlets to transmit a cadena, a compulsory simultaneous broadcast of government propaganda through all private and public media, of indefinite duration.
Clip...
This is the fine-print government apologists inevitably overlook. This hugely lopsided communication imbalance means state resources are used extensively for propaganda purpose, vilifying opposition voices, and imposing a biased, distorted versions of current events as undisputed truth.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116731/how-nicolas-maduro-controls-venezuelan-media
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)We get the Corporate State's lying, distorted version of events.
Somebody help me--What am I missing here?
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)that, although the Venezuelan government directly controls a small part of the overall media market it still controls a great deal of the information provided to the Venezuelan people. The post this was made in response to was incorrect in its premise.