Reply #277: Why not share some of your sources on this news lockdown going on in Venezuela? [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

That's such a powerful assertion it cries out for substance. Please do take the time to look for your legitimate, factual references. In the meantime, here's something which may help:

Media In Venezuela: Facts and Fiction
Written by Caitlin McNulty and Liz Migliorelli
Monday, 17 August 2009 09:36

~snip~
Media Sources in Venezuela

The preferred news source of most Venezuelans is television media. There are at least five nationally broadcasted television stations that dispatch via "free-over-the-air" and publicly allotted signals. These stations include Venevisión (controlled by Grupo Cisneros), Univision, Televisión de Venezuela (Televen) and previous to it's closing (which will be explained later in the article), Radio Caracas Television (RCTV).2

For several decades, commercial television in Venezuela has belonged to an oligopoly of two families, the Cisneros and the Bottome & Granier Group. The tremendous influence of these parties reaches beyond broadcast networks into advertising and public relations agencies that operate for the welfare of the stations, as well as record labels and other societal industries that produce material to be promoted on the stations. Not only does the Cisneros family own Venevisión, the largest station in Venezuela, they own over seventy media outlets in 39 countries, including DirecTV Latin America, AOL Latin America, Caracol Television (Colombia), the Univisión Network in the United States, Galavisión, Playboy Latin America as well as beverage and food distribution such as Coca Cola bottling, Regional Beer and Pizza Hut in Venezuela. They also own entities such as Los Leones baseball team of Caracas and the Miss Venezuela Pageant.3 The reach of the Cisneros power is massive; the media monopoly broadcasts to more than four million television screens in Venezuela, giving it tremendous power and influence.

Globovisión, a channel that is widely broadcast in major metropolitan centers such as Caracas, Carabobo and Zulia and is also available on satellite on DirecTV, and CNN en Español are both private stations that have a harsh anti-Chávez rhetoric. President of CNN en Español Christopher Cromwell has said that Chávez may not like the programming on his network, but this meant that CNN was doing its job correctly. Another station, Valores Educativos Televisión (Vale TV) is a major regional network that is neither state-run nor commercially aimed, run by the Asociación Civil, which is managed by the Catholic Church.4 These smaller, regional networks are never mentioned in reports of media in Venezuela. Five major private television networks control at least 90% of the market and smaller private stations control another 5%. This 95% of the broadcast market was quick to express its opposition to President Chávez's administration as early as 1999, soon after Chávez first took office.5 There are three public and state-controlled television channels that exist on the same national electromagnetic spectrum, including Venezolana de Televisión (VTV, established in 1964, a state-owned television network); Visión Venezuela (ViVe TV, established in 2003, a cultural network funded by the government that is not yet broadcasted nationally); and Televisora Venezolana Social (TVes, established in 2007 as RCTV's substitute).6 These channels cannot compete with the privately owned, commercial media that serve as the dominant source of television news media in Venezuela.

Print media in Venezuela is diverse, but it depicts a greater opposition presence than seen in television networks. Many publications are corporate-owned and extremely critical of the Chávez administration. In comparison to the United States, where New York, the largest city, has only four daily papers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Daily News), two of which are markedly sympathetic to the Bush administration, Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, has twenty-one daily papers. Whereas the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Washington Post are the only nationally distributed daily papers in the United States, Venezuela circulates eight daily papers nationally. A Washington D.C. based think-tank Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) has described the print media situation in simple terms: "nine out of ten newspapers, including El Nacional and El Universal, are staunchly anti-Chávez." 7

Never was corporate media's agenda of destabilizing the Chavez government more transparent than during the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez, which was seen by many as the "first media war in world history".8 Overwhelming public outrage broke out as the majority of Venezuelans who voted Chávez into office saw the democratic process derailed before their very eyes. Their voices, actions, and protests were silenced by the news media in favor of the "inauguration ceremony" of Pedro Carmona, the illegitimate coup-appointed interim President of Venezuela. In response to the government's change of the executive board of Petroleros de Venezuela (PDVSA, Venezuela's oil company) a massive opposition march to the headquarters of PDVSA was promoted by print media, radio and television incessantly. In the days before the coup, instead of regular television programming, Venevisión, RCTV,
Globovisión and Televen broadcasted constant anti-Chávez speeches and propaganda calling for viewers to take to the streets. Some ads urged, "Venezuelans, take to the streets on Thursday, April 11 at 10 a.m. Bring your flags. For freedom and democracy. Venezuela will not surrender. No one will defeat us."9 Many propaganda ads were extremely threatening and clearly intended to instigate violence and an overthrow of the Chávez government.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2059/1/