Comments on: Venezuela: Chávez’s war on independent media

By: firepigette

firepigette — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:24:43 +0000

What is striking is that Chavez’s appetite for control is insatiable.After closing down Globovision you can be sure there will be a new chapter in the Telenovela against another ” mortal threat” to the Revolution.Perhaps he will choose the newspapers or something else.

By: MyRealName

MyRealName — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:08:39 +0000

I find it very amusing, that people still come with the “documentary” “The revolution will not be televised”. Especially PSFs love to show, how much they know about Venezuela by citing the “documentary”. You should try to watch “X-Ray of a lie” afterwards.

I actually like Globovision, although it misses often the “real journalism” it is at least not afraid in calling a swine “a swine”. And they have done some neat pieces of investigative journalism. And compared to Canal 8 (VTV), they’re angels. VTV fails completly in journalism and that might be the reason, why they want to go against the ethical rules of journalism. Because if these rules would be applied as they should be, many people there couldn’t work as journalist anymore. (I could also imagine, that many of the VTV-”Journalists” aren’t even journalists by profession.

When Chavez is gone one day and all the things come out to the rest of the world, people will say again : We couldn’t know about all this… but then they will applaude to the next caudillo claiming to make a “socialism”.. and this time all will be much better.. yeah, right…

btw Daniel, thanks for not giving up on writing in your blog..

By: FC

FC — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:20:13 +0000

I find the whole “Illegal Coup” excuse flimsy and laughable, if it were true then Venevision and Televen should have also been closed, but they weren’t, why? They negotiated a truce with the government and they longer criticize it. The closing of RCTV was political retribution, nothing more, nothing less. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to confuse and muddle the issue. The worst part of is that due to the censor laws even RCTV was forced to be mostly mildly critical, far far far worse things have been aired on VTV, the public TV network, which is dubbed: “Discovery Chavez”.

By: Vinz

Vinz — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:26:29 +0000

Various problems are underlined by the author in this article. We can see a real contradiction between a “free democracy” and a system where the government vertically imposes its views on the population, using an abusive intromision in other institutions.
We cannot speak of freedom and liberty when rules and laws are “commanded” and imposed by the executive, with no regards as to what the pubic sphere has to say about the measures.
There is no counterbalance: All we have is a very pervasive system that chooses, based on political whims and blatant discrimination, who it will chase and strangle, be it on corruption charges (Baduel, Rosales), or on TV coverage.
This “selective authoritarianism” is a perverse, uncomprehensible system that leaves opponents naked in front of an all-commanding, tout puissant, executive that controls every institution and uses it at its will.
Make no mistake: This is far from being democratic, just or fair. I don’t like Globo, but I’m not as blind so as to understand this witch hunt is baseless and shows Chavez’ steamroller, bulldowzer, mow-down-the-opposition, strategy. You need to listen to the violent and insulting discourse to understand this deterioration and see its consequences in full.
Globo is a symptom of how things are being handled, unilaterally, without discussion or consensus, in current Venezuelan society.
Chávez doesn’t govern: He commands. He never tries to open spaces for free discussion and never accepts another point of view. Agreeing with him on one issue or another doesn’t mask this terrible, abuse of power, fact.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:14:29 +0000

It is ironic that an “illegal coup” is brought up as a reason to move against RCTV, since President Chavez participated in an “illegal coup” in 1992, and every year celebrates the anniversary of the 1992 “ilegal coup.” I guess since Chavez was the perpetrator of the 1992 coup, commenter GS considers it a “legal coup.”

Another point is that in 2002 RCTV was not the only TV company/channel that was against Chavez. The others moderated their tone after 2002 in return for being able to stay on the air. As they say, plomo o plata, at least in metaphor.

It is also ironic that “decades of corrupt regimes” is brought up as a reason to support Chavez.While Chavez campaigned against corruption in 1998, by all accounts corruption is the worst it has ever been. Consider Diosdado Cabello and José Vicente Rangel Avalos ( Junior). Check out the Boliburgués. The Economist had a good article several years ago on them.

If you want to learn more about Venezuela, check out Daniel’s blog (Google daniel venezuela blogspot). Also Caracas Chronicles (first time visitor ? “start here) and Devil’s Excrement

By: GS

GS — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:09:52 +0000

RCTV’s license was not renewed as this private (and biased for US interests and the corrupt opposition) company was heavily involved in the illegal coup against president Chavez (and 2 days installment of an illegal president). It did not and has not adherted to any unpartial media rules. Watch ‘The Revolution will not be televised’ – a documentary which is suppressed but can be downloaded feely in the internet – which is fully supported by the film makers). I assume such a TV station would not have been allowed one second if they would have supported the removal of the elected president (and maybe supported the installment of an Iran-connected president). It would be recommendable to investigate the true happenings before crying out about censorship. I do not have any deeper information regarding the Globovision case, but it seems that taxes have been avoided in a non-legal way, as far as I understand. For me, Venezuela has been an extraordinary, real democracy since Hugo Chavez became president and I, for once, think that this country, after decades of corrupt regimes working against the majority, is THE social and justice-based democracy example for the whole world – especially many Western countries, who think SO great of themselves – but invade other countries if they feel like.