ksslemp wrote:Stopper wrote:ksslemp wrote:Quoted from the Al Jazeera english news site:Chavez said: "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." http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/51EC4421-C697-43C4-A5B8-808B067BE1B9.htmI love the quote from the telecommunications minister "democratizing the broadcast spectrum"
that is sooo funny! This sounds like something you'd hear from a North Korean official,
it is that absurd!Spoken like a true Tyrant!
Seik Heil! Hugo
Ksslemp, since you keep harping on about this, can we take it, then, that you approve of privately-owned TV stations encouraging the overthrow of democratically-elected governments?
Answer:
NOI'd be interested in viewing the broadcast in which the station stated that the people should overthrow the gov't. and if this viewpoint was expressed as an opinion by a T.V. anchor and if they have laws which say that is illegal, then by all means arrest
that person. What i am saying is that it would depend on how they encouraged the overthrow to be accomplished. If it was by legal means, i.e. impeachment, new elections or asking for his resignation, i would deem that to be acceptable.
What did you think of Hugos statement? Does it sound Democratic to you?
Firstly, no laws don't work like that. The station bears the responsibility for its programming. If a station in the UK aired a programme which strongly advocated a military coup against the elected government it would lose its license here as well. He didn't just send in the thugs and smash up the equipment in the middle of the night, nor did he cart anyone off... He simply declined to renew their license. It has happened in the US on several occasions. He has done this within the laws of his country, whether his motivations be for right or for wrong, as he has done it in a reasonably transparent way.
And the station called for, supported and aired propoganda for an actual military coup in 2002 which ultimately failed. They screened directions for protectors and activists, broadcast locations for action and failed to announce the end of the coup when Chavez regained power, arguably to prolong the fighting.
On the other hand, Chavez is by no means a beacon of light himself but we need to see both sides of the story, rather than be blinded by pro-America propoganda (partially due to the fact that the US had some pretty shady involvements with the 2002 coup itself).
This article is probably the best, and most independent, source for what I'm trying to drill into your propaganda-filled little head: (and it is important to note it is from the JOURNALISTIC community not the political community).
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR.org) wrote:Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs
Distorting the Venezuelan media story
5/25/07
The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.
According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes (5/21/07), the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chávez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chávez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, is refusing now to renew the license of this television station that has been critical of his government."
Though straighter, a news story by the Associated Press (5/20/07) still maintained the theme that the license denial was based simply on political differences, with reporter Elizabeth Munoz describing RCTV as "a network that has been critical of Chávez."
In a May 14 column, Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl called the action an attempt to silence opponents and more "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator." Wrote Diehl, "Chávez has made clear that his problem with [RCTV owner Marcel] Granier and RCTV is political."
In keeping with the media script that has bad guy Chávez brutishly silencing good guys in the democratic opposition, all these articles skimmed lightly over RCTV's history, the Venezuelan government's explanation for the license denial and the process that led to it.
RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks’ participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup—hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.
On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."
That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), "[Venezuelan] officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."
As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "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."
When Chávez returned to power the commercial stations refused to cover the news, airing instead entertainment programs—in RCTV's case, the American film Pretty Woman. By refusing to cover such a newsworthy story, the stations abandoned the public interest and violated the public trust that is seen in Venezuela (and in the U.S.) as a requirement for operating on the public airwaves. Regarding RCTV's refusal to cover the return of Chávez to power, Columbia University professor and former NPR editor John Dinges told Marketplace (5/8/07):
What RCTV did simply can't be justified under any stretch of journalistic principles…. When a television channel simply fails to report, simply goes off the air during a period of national crisis, not because they're forced to, but simply because they don't agree with what's happening, you've lost your ability to defend what you do on journalistic principles.
The Venezuelan government is basing its denial of license on RCTV's involvement in the 2002 coup, not on the station's criticisms of or political opposition to the government. Many American pundits and some human rights spokespersons have confused the issue by claiming the action is based merely on political differences, failing to note that Venezuela's media, including its commercial broadcasters, are still among the most vigorously dissident on the planet.
When Patrick McElwee of the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy interviewed representatives of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists—all groups that have condemned Venezuela's action in denying RCTV's license renewal—he found that none of the spokespersons thought broadcasters were automatically entitled to license renewals, though none of them thought RCTV's actions in support of the coup should have resulted in the station having its license renewal denied. This led McElwee to wonder, based on the rights groups' arguments, "Could it be that governments like Venezuela have the theoretical right to not to renew a broadcast license, but that no responsible government would ever do it?"
McElwee acknowledged the critics' point that some form of due process should have been involved in the decisions, but explained that laws preexisting Chávez's presidency placed licensing decision with the executive branch, with no real provisions for a hearings process: "Unfortunately, this is what the law, first enacted in 1987, long before Chávez entered the political scene, allows. It charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal, but does not seem to require any administrative hearing. The law should be changed, but at the current moment when broadcast licenses are up for renewal, it is the prevailing law and thus lays out the framework in which decisions are made."
Government actions weighing on journalism and broadcast licensing deserve strong scrutiny. However, on the central question of whether a government is bound to renew the license of a broadcaster when that broadcaster had been involved in a coup against the democratically elected government, the answer should be clear, as McElwee concludes:
The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, 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.
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