Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and media controversey (Robert McChesney)

Give credit to IndianaGreen's posting this in editorials. I thought it was important enough to be read here also.

Published on Friday, June 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Venezuela and the Media: Fact and Fiction
by Robert W. McChesney & Mark Weisbrot
To read and view the U.S. news media over the past week, there is an episode of grand tyranny unfolding, one repugnant to all who cherish democratic freedoms. The Venezuelan government under “strongman” Hugo Chavez refused to renew the 20-year broadcast license for RCTV, because that medium had the temerity to be critical of his regime. It is a familiar story.

And in this case it is wrong.

Regrettably, the US media coverage of Venezuela’s RCTV controversy says more about the deficiencies of our own news media that it does about Venezuela. It demonstrates again, as with the invasion of Iraq, how our news media are far too willing to carry water for Washington than to ascertain and report the truth of the matter.

Here are some of the facts and some of the context that the media have omitted or buried:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1607/

Or, maybe not. lol

'nuff said.

What you think? ;)

Well, I don't believe Mr. Chavez is a saint but I know Bush is a devil.

:hi:

....US Media AND RCTV are wholly-owned subsidiaries of BushCo?

Far too many DUers, supposedly wise enough at the very least from the US government's bullshit re Iraq, have swallowed whole the on-going US government's bullshit about Hugo Chavez as "dictator".

How can we ever hope rightwingnuts see through the bullshit, when so many progressives can't??!

Why do DUers hate Chavez? I don't get it. They are recycling the BushCo talking points and I don't get that, either.

If CNN did what RCTV did, they'd be shut down in hours, not years. F#ck me, I must be missing something. :shrug:

But ya won't find the US "media" mentioning that fact, either.

it'd be nice if the people who supposedly did this had been convicted in one. I guess we just have to assume they're guilty, you know like they do in democracies all around the world.

--as being sources of "islamofascism," but never mentions Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, but fail to notice that the same MSM is aghast at Venezuela, but never mentions the gawdawful murder rates of journalists in Columbia and Mexico (or the outright election theft in the latter).

He's a danger! He's a dictator! Terra!

deny the wealthy of his country more wealth in favor of the poor of his country??!

What a fascist pinko commie!

:rofl:

and community health clinics but WE HATE HIS ATTITUDE because that's OUR OIL!

:rofl:

Media, Propaganda and Venezuela

...by investigative journalist, Greg Palast, June 25, 2003, also raises this issue. In addition, Palast takes note of the color of the pro and anti Chavez marchers, and notes a racial line too. In a very brief overview, he states, “For five centuries, Venezuela has been run by a minority of very white people, pure-blood descendants of the Spanish conquistadors. To most of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who are brown, Hugo Chavez is their Nelson Mandela, (the man Cheney called a "terrorist") the man who will smash the economic and social apartheid that has kept the dark-skinned millions stacked in cardboard houses in the hills above Caracas while the whites live in high-rise splendor in the city center. Chavez, as one white Caracas reporter told me with a sneer, gives them bricks and milk, and so they vote for him.”

As noted further above, Chavez’s policies have been to aid the poor, and some of those policies are actually working. The elite however, are finding that some of their wealth is indirectly being redistributed to the poor, or that their potential wealth is going to be redirected.

http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Propaganda/Venezuela.asp#ProAntiChavezDemonstrations

BushCo's hit job on Chavez but I hadn't seen this. :hi:

It's so disheartening, isn't it, that so many supposedly progressive Americans can still be conned duped tricked by the very same "media" that tried & failed to con trick dupe them about Iraq.

Then again, 70% of Americans -progressives included- thought Iraq did 911, so I shouldn't really be surprised about so many Duers swallowing the koolaid about Chavez. Sad. But not surprised.

Chavez is simply buying these votes with the programs! These poor ignorant deluded poor folks think that Chavez is helping them, what with his "education" and "health care" and "literacy programs" and "land reform". How will these people learn to deal with their own problems if this is all given to them by the government???!?!? Don't they realize they would be much better off poor and destitute?

Helping the poor is the worst form of tyranny!

</ayn rand>

BushCo put all their "eggs" in one Mid-East "basket" and figured Venezuela would go down quite easily...However, it hasn't....Now, it's corporate media bullshit time, yes, propaganda time, and the gullible will believe as your favorite corporate media of choice is telling & trying to turn the tide...How can people really believe and accept this shit...That any country's leader, that's labeled a "leftist" by the republicans is OUR problem, not the rich, gouging, imperialist so we must "liberate", which only affects the long-term profit margin.

Hugo Chavez - Supported by Civil Societies Groups
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2315

Hugo Chavez versus RCTV
But the case of RCTV — like most things involving Chavez — has been caught up in a web of misinformation. While one side of the story is getting headlines around the world, the other is barely heard.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jones30may30,0,1061242.story?coll=la-opinion-center

Guardian Op-Ed: UK Should Back Chavez in RCTV Controversy
Neoconservative forces, via compliant media outlets and Christian right groupings within the European parliament, are preparing their latest attack on Hugo Chávez and the government of Venezuela. The latest focus of the campaign is the decision of Venezuela's broadcasting authorities not to renew the licence of the private television channel RCTV. The anti-Chávez apparatus once again presents a test for Foreign Office ministers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2087696,00.html

How the US Media Distorted the Story
The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion.It is about the government declining to renew a broadcast license to a company
that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States.

In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it’s doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107

Mr Chávez's approval ratings hover at 65%, close to the landslide he won in last December's election, his third consecutive triumph since sweeping to power in 1998.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,2085952,00.html

who this guy is and what he's really doing and what it really means instead of just passing along BushCo talking points.

:kick:

His telling the Venezuelan story through the media angle is the best way to get across the truth of what is happening.

...

"Aggressive unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own."

-snip-

my goodness, reading this article I discovered actual facts to back up such a statement.

and all this time I was believing Chavez is throwing journalists in jail, closing down all the tv stations, suppressing every bit of free speech out Venezuela.

hmmm, thats what I get for watching CNN and network news.- called propaganda.

I learned a LOT this week trying to find answers for DUers who challenged me on Chavez threads. They did me a favor.

not my usual outlook on life, but at this point, well.....

when I was searching terms to respond to DUers on Chavez threads.

For every sort of neutral entry, there was a host of RW nutcase stuff. Pages and pages of RW weirdness. :wow:

The internets are an amazing tool.

And the thing is, it would be nice to find out who the heck this guy is but we may never be able to do that because the Noise Machine is going full tilt boogie.