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Chavez Closes TV Channel
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has carried out his threat to close down privately-run broadcasters who criticise his regime. On 27 May, Radio Caracas Television - a station which regularly hauls in 40 percent of the nation's viewers - will cease broadcasting.
RCTV is mainly known in Venezuela for its soap operas and quiz shows. However, its news broadcasts have been described as fiercely critical of Chavez and have been accused of painting a gloomy picture of crime and poverty in the nation, contrary to state television broadcasts praising the President's rule.
By the sounds of things, both state and private channels display strong bias: The Guardian reports that even some of RCTV's reporters admit their output is strongly critical of Chavez's rule.
One might argue that it might be fair enough to close an insurrectionary station if alternative broadcasters did a decent job of reporting the news fairly. This does not appear to be the case in Venezuela, a point lost on western commentators such as Tariq Ali and Le Monde Diplomatique's director Ignacio Ramonet. Both have supported Chavez and his decision to block the station and potentially three other private broadcasters who have attacked the President.
Rory Carroll's article in the Guardian describing the ban displays some unease at the closure of a critical voice in Venezuela. While Chavez does not lack admirers in Europe, few share Ali or Ramonet's zeal for the closure of media outlets, especially as the free press is threatened in Russia and China works to limit internet freedoms. No journalist worthy of the name can shamelessly condone censorship, no matter how much they sympathise with that government's position.
That said, Carroll's writing also drips with slogans straight from the Chavista hymnsheet. He writes of RCTV backing the 2002 coup against Chavez, and broadcasting cartoons while Venezuelans marched in the street in support of their leader, "in a vain effort to ignore the popular will." (EURSOC looks forward to Guardian reporters describing upcoming anti-Sarkozy protests in Paris as a "vain attempts to ignore the popular will").
Carroll also writes of how RCTV "(plays) down evidence of social progress" in its news reports. "Social progress" is not an objective phrase, but one used by supporters of left-wing causes to describe the implementation of their policies: Indeed, it is Maoist in its insistence that critical positions oppose progress.
These are not phrases that mainstream newspapers should use if their reporting expects to be taken seriously. It will be difficult to trust the Guardian's reports from Caracas as long as Carroll gets away with slipping them into his copy unhindered.
