Venezuelan Strongman's New Gig: National Disc Jockey (NYT)

Deep in Venezuela's new, cumbersome Social Responsibility Law is an item that requires radio stations to play more - much more - Venezuelan music. The idea, the fiercely nationalist government says, is to promote Venezuelan culture over foreign culture, particularly American rock, which has dominated radio airplay for years.

snip

If the measure seems obscure, its effects have not been. From the techno-pop wizards of cosmopolitan Caracas to the folksy crooners of this cattle town, Venezuelan musicians say they are reaping benefits from President Hugo Chávez's efforts to regulate culture.

snip

Others grouse that the law amounts to another half-baked idea from Mr. Chávez's populist government.

"All countries worry about not playing enough of their music but the fact is that folkloric music is not the majority's music," said Carlos Espinoza of Record Report, a company that monitors airplay in Caracas. "I like to hear folkloric music when I'm in a steakhouse out in the country. But in Caracas, standing in line, I don't want to hear the harp, the cuatro and maracas. I have a right to decide what I want to hear."

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/international/americas/03venezuela.html?pagewanted=2

While I usually am skeptical of government attempts to regulate media content, this idea sounds like a totally reasonable response to cultural corruption. It's really hard to feel sorry for the guy who loves Huey Lewis and the News - especially when we see the end result of FM radio "freedom" here in the U.S. - i.e. nothing anyone with a brain would want to listen to. The article starts out biased with its declaration that the Social Responsibility Law is "cumbersome" (according to who?) but it is actually remarkably even-handed, given Forero's history of writing articles biased against Chavez (IMO).

When he was elected twice.....

when we know Canada has the same sort of law, and they're not that fierce (have you heard their national anthem?)?

if you count the recall in 2004.

you'd think winning 69%+ of the vote in 2 elections and a recall election would give you legitimacy.

Goes to show you that those who criticize him know nothing of democracy.

elected leader won't play their game.

:argh:

;-)

I mean, that IS the truth.

Whenever you hear Hugo Chavez referred to as a strongman, then you know the media outlet is a propaganda mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex.

It's the Venezuelan circus come to town, and thanks to the NYT for pointing this out! Gotta love NYT use of labels eh?

It really is that simple. That the NY Times would allow Forero to continue covering Venezuela after his direct complicity in the coup attempt is an outrage to be studied by journalism professors in the future. The man is an oligarch flack and nothing more.

Didn't you find it amazingly even-handed, despite some perjorative monikers such as "strongman"? Maybe someone has slapped him around a little.

I was in San Cristobal when the Zapatistas began their march to the capital back in 2001. I watched the pickups loaded with masked persons come rolling into town, the thousands and thousands of people on foot, carrying their banners and probably a good portion of everything they owned. I watched the assembly and the rally for as long as I could stay awake before having to go back to the lodging house.

At an internet café a couple of days later, I read the Times account of the evening, and it was clear that the reporter hadn't been within 100 miles of Chiapas, but was relying on some government-sympathetic observer who probably didn't leave the chi-chi restaurant near the zoccolo.

I learned that week that the Times, newspaper of record that it likes to style itself, is not always the most reliable reporter of events.

would allow such slanted news to be printed. The NYT is a mediocre establishment junk.

Does he run a regime? At any rate, nobody could claim it is populist, or popular.

is more loved around the world than he is, and has received more support from his people than Bush ever will.

So if Chavez is a strongman, Bush is the Uber-Tyrant Strongman.

like that. Who wrote that headline, John Bolton? Otto Reich?

I've got your strongman, right here:



You may remember learning that the opposition has been calling Hugo Chavez, even on their tv networks, an ape, a monkey, primitive, ugly, disgusting, uncouth, etc., etc., etc.

Evidently this slimeball, impeached President Carlos Andres Perez, more closely approaches their aesthetic ideal.



He's much lighter, you see. What about their coup President, Pedro Carmona?



They don't have too much to work with, do they? This is a pitiful whine of a story. Apparently the European descended Venezuelans imagine they are the only ones who matter, even though a huge mass of Venezuelans are NOT ashamed of their history, their ancestors, no matter how hard the European descended ones try to claim they are the only ones who could possibly matter.

They controlled the wealth, they have controlled the government, they have controlled the culture. It's time they learned to share. They are a true minority trying to silence and ignore the vast numbers of citizens they permit to do all the hard labor.

Wouldn't you think you would have a right to decide what you want to hear.

I really don't see a benefit in government-regulated music. What's next, government-regulated news? Isn't that what we're bitching about in this country?

Let people listen to the music they want to listen to.

This is the international addition part of the NYTs


Chávez calls the tune on Venezuela charts


By Juan Forero The New York Times

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2005



BARINAS, Venezuela Deep in Venezuela's new, cumbersome Social Responsibility Law is an item that requires radio stations to play more - much more - Venezuelan music.
The idea, the fiercely nationalist government says, is to promote Venezuelan culture over foreign culture, particularly American rock that has dominated radio airplay for years.>>>>snip

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/03/news/venez.php

Actually the whole title should be in quotes. It's a NYT times title, meant to be slanderous and cutesy ironical at the same time. Ugh!

They are forever using phrases like "the increasingly authoritarian" Hugo Chavez, with absolutely zero evidence to back it up, and while ignoring overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

As for Venezuela trying to promote Venezuelan music, they SHOULD promote it, especially as opposed to the canned crap the U.S. music industry produces. People have a right, and even a duty, to protect their indigenous cultures, and to resist U.S.-based corporate monoculture. And many nations do it. In France, it is carried to great lengths, involving even a restricted list of baby's names--only traditional French names can be chosen (used to be--not sure if it's still enforced, but it's a good example), as well as Americanized words, food, and mass entertainment. And cultures that don't take measures to protect themselves find their cultures cheapened and homogenized. American culture does NOT travel well.

With the pervasive influence of American TV and movies, it is an uphill battle to protect and promote indigenous culture, and to instill pride in local "do it yourself" ANYTHING--music, drama, food, fashion, small business, you name it. U.S.-based global corporate predators (Gap and Starbucks come to mind, but it's true of multiple products--especially agricultural products and food) are hostile to local enterprise and culture. What U.S. ag did to Jamaica, for instance, is a crime--dumping U.S. ag products there at cheap prices, and absolutely destroying the local peoples' ability to feed themselves, by destroying local dairy and other farmers.

The global corporate U.S. music industry will do the same thing to Venezuelan music. They will destroy the local music industry to enrich a few super-rich non-Venezuelans.

The law requires that half of radio music programming be homegrown, and is helping to create a Renaissance in Venezuelan music, new forms of Venezuelan music, and re-discovery of older records and musicians. Read the article! The truth is buried in the details--beyond the NYT's stupid headline and its hem-hawing efforts to find some downside. They don't succeed. It seems to be doing nothing but good.

In Canada.

Canadian Content

Canadian content is the cornerstone of Canada's Broadcasting Act. Check this page to see how the CRTC has helped to ensure the development and presence of Canadian content in our broadcasting system through its various policies and regulations.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon.htm

it is a short step from regulating the music I can hear to the news and information I can receive - I don't like it in this country and wouldn't like it there any better.

Your country has not been indirectly controlled by another country for ages, through land ownership by absentee parties, its natural resources being taken away for use outside the country, and subject to control by organizations like another country's governments' wishes superceding the wishes and needs of its own population.

As an example, Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban "exile" terrorist now awaiting a _Bush decision concerning his future, after spending a lifetime of terrorizing Cuban citizens and others from Latin America as a CIA asset, was ALSO able to get himself naturalized as a Venezuelan citizen and ALSO worked as head of the Venezuelan secret service while he plotted the bombing of a Cubana airliner mid-air, which killed all 73 people on board.

He also worked in Iran-Contra, and for Washington and Chilean secret agencies in assassinating other world figures, through Operation Condor.

Venezuela has been controlled by American interests much of the 20th century, one way or another. _Bush seeks to control it now. There is absolutely NOTHING the two countries, the two cultures have in common. Venezuela is moving toward, for the first time, INDEPENDENCE from American control.

You are far off-base to attempt to compare the two.

Music is about freedom of expression. Freedom of enjoyment. I don't want anybody jamming their music down my throat, which is why I don't look at MTV or VH1.

Venezuela is known as the most "americanized" country in South America. American cars. yeah its a different culture but to say the US and Ven have nothing in common culturally is ridiculous.

have you been there?

I don't hear anyone referring to Chirac as the French strongman.

What can we expect from the same newspaper that thinks Judy Miller is a martyr for the First Amendment?

have similar policies to promote national culture.

From the CBC archives on "Ruling the Airwaves":

"Canadian broadcasting should be Canadian." Pierre Juneau said those words in 1970 and he meant business. The Canadian Radio-Television Commission head said Canadian broadcasters were behaving like mouthpieces for American "entertainment factories," and introduced strict Canadian content rules for radio and television.

Canadian content rules

Juneau was CRTC head under Canadian Strong Man Pierre Trudeau, whose regime implemented the Canadian Content rules.

So Canada has been oppressing its citizens, and interfering with their rights to be Americans, huh? What strongman madman should be blamed the most for this?

The nerve!

It was like a drink of water in the desert to see I.G.'s reference to Strongman Chirac, and yours to Strongman Trudeau. You're really driving home the point, and I need to thank you.

Totally reasonable. Australia has in place a 20%+ Aussie content rule for radio (similar for TV).

http://www.amrap.org/resources.php?resourceid=4&p=1

When I lived in the land of Simón Bolívar, Carlos Andrés Pérez was the president and thief. A believer in the USA, he was also concerned that too much music from the USA was being poured over the radio waves and that their small nation would only become an echo of the USA.

Result:

ALL RADIO STATIONS MUST USE 50% of their air time for música criolla.

What many radio stations did was to play música criolla from 12:00 AM to about 6:00 when the kids were asleep. The for two hours US/Eur music. Then while they were at school, música criolla. Thus they played US music at all times when the kids could hear it.

Now why is Chávez under attack for doing things that his predecessors have done? Where is the slightest amount of journalist investigation into the background of the situation.

Feel free to disseminate, if need be.

ONLY because of the embargo on American films...