{"id":134236,"date":"2019-05-27T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=134236"},"modified":"2019-06-04T10:02:08","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T09:02:08","slug":"theres-far-more-diversity-in-venezuelas-muzzled-media-than-in-us-corporate-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/05\/theres-far-more-diversity-in-venezuelas-muzzled-media-than-in-us-corporate-press\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s Far More Diversity in Venezuela\u2019s \u2018Muzzled\u2019 Media than in US Corporate Press"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Time\u2018s depiction of Juan Guaid\u00f3 talking to the press.\u00a0 (photo: Luis Robayo).<\/p><\/div>\n

20 May 2019 – <\/em>The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation\u2019s crisis has become perhaps the world\u2019s most lucrative fictional genre. Ciara Nugent\u2019s recent piece for Time<\/strong> (4\/16\/19<\/a>), headlined \u201c\u2018Venezuelans Are Starving for Information\u2019: The Battle to Get News in a Country in Chaos,\u201d distinguished itself as a veritable masterpiece of this literary fad.<\/p>\n

The article\u2019s slant should come as no surprise, given Time<\/strong>\u2019s (and Nugent\u2019s) enthusiastic endorsement (2\/1\/19<\/a>) of the ongoing coup led by self-proclaimed \u201cinterim president\u201d Juan Guaid\u00f3. Time<\/strong>\u2019s report is based on a trope oft-repeated by corporate journalists for over a decade (Extra!<\/strong>, 11\u201312\/06<\/a>), namely that Venezuela\u2019s elected Chavista government is an \u201cauthoritarian\u201d regime that brutally suppresses freedom of expression. Corporate outlets frequently speak of \u201cCh\u00e1vez\u2019s clampdown on press freedom\u201d (New York Times<\/strong>, 4\/30\/19<\/a>), \u201ca country where critical newspapers and broadcast media already have been muzzled\u201d and \u201cmuch of Venezuela\u2019s independent press has disappeared\u201d (NBC<\/strong>, 2\/3\/19<\/a>, 5\/16\/19<\/a>), or the Maduro \u201cregime\u201d controlling \u201calmost all the television and radio stations\u201d (Bloomberg<\/strong>, 1\/29\/19<\/a>).<\/p>\n

However, the Time<\/strong> journalist\u2019s nightmarish narrative of Orwellian state censorship flies in the face of basic empirical facts that are readily apparent to anyone who has spent any time in Venezuela. While Nugent claims that, for Venezuelans, \u201cfinding out what\u2019s going on around them has become a struggle,\u201d it\u2019s in fact quite common to witness informed political debates in bars, shops and public plazas. The idea Nugent tries to sell that it takes some photogenic gimmick of someone standing on a bus with a cardboard \u201ctelevision\u201d to inform the public is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Time (4\/16\/19) joined in on the corporate media\u2019s literary fad of fictionalized accounts of the Venezuelan crisis.<\/p><\/div>\n

Television<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMost television is state-run, and authorities ban the few independent TV and radio stations from covering Venezuela\u2019s crisis as it unfolds,\u201d Nugent assures readers. It is unclear whether Nugent has ever watched television in Venezuela, because few statements could be farther from the truth. In fact, Venezuela has three major private television stations (Venevision<\/strong><\/a>, Televen<\/strong><\/a> and Globovisi\u00f3n<\/strong><\/a>), each with millions of viewers.<\/p>\n

As of 2013, when the last audience study was conducted by AGB Nielsen<\/a>, billionaire media mogul Gustavo Cisneros\u2019 Venevision<\/strong> dominated the national news market, with 36 percent of the total viewing public. Venevision<\/strong> was followed by state-run VTV<\/strong><\/a>, at 25 percent, with Televen<\/strong> and Globovision<\/strong> coming in third and fourth at 22 percent and 15 percent, respectively. While no new studies have been conducted since, evidence suggests private media\u2019s dominance has strengthened, not weakened, over the last six years.<\/p>\n

First, while coming in way behind Venevision<\/strong> and Televen<\/strong> in terms of overall ratings, for years VTV<\/strong> undoubtedly had its news viewership buoyed by the charismatic presence of the late President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, who even had his own highly popular weekly talkshow, Al\u00f3 Presidente<\/strong>, on the network. It\u2019s a reasonable bet that VTV<\/strong>\u2019s news ratings have taken a significant dip in the six years since Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s death, with the gradual onset of a deep economic and political crisis that has sapped vital resources and political morale from the state channel.<\/p>\n

Secondly, data from Venezuela\u2019s telecommunications watchdog, CONATEL<\/a>, shows a steady increase in private television subscribers, which rose from 17 percent in 2000 to a peak of 68 percent in 2015. As of last year, over 60 percent of Venezuelan households paid for a private cable or satellite subscription.<\/p>\n

Subscriptions are highly affordable, with top satellite provider Direct TV<\/strong><\/a> offering packages beginning at the equivalent of just 70 cents per month on the parallel market rate, or about the price of a cold beer.<\/p>\n

In the case of Direct TV<\/strong>, which controls 44 percent of the paid subscription market, plans include a host of international news channels, including Fox News<\/strong>, CNN<\/strong>, BBC<\/strong> and Univisi\u00f3n\u2014<\/strong>none of which could be mistaken for pro-Chavista mouthpieces.<\/p>\n

Contrary to Nugent\u2019s story of a state-run media monopoly, the available data suggests that under Chavismo, Venezuelans have progressively expanded their access to private international news channels, most of which display a decidedly right-wing, anti-government slant in their coverage.<\/p>\n

Even aside from US-based networks like Fox<\/strong> and CNN<\/strong>, Venezuela\u2019s private TV news spectrum is dominated by pro-opposition perspectives. The only exception is Globovisi\u00f3n<\/strong>, which a 2015 American University study<\/a> found to have \u201cno significant bias in favor of the government or the opposition\u201d\u2014contrary to claims<\/a> by the New York Times<\/strong> (2\/21\/19) that the private network \u201cchanged its editorial line to support Mr. Maduro\u201d following its ownership change.<\/p>\n

Despite opposition allegations that Venevision<\/strong> has likewise become a \u201cpro-regime\u201d outlet, the channel frequently interviews leaders of opposition parties; for example, it recently ran a sympathetic, 12-minute interview (5\/2\/19) with Sergio Vergara G.<\/a>, leader in the National Assembly of Guaid\u00f3\u2019s ultra-militant right-wing Popular Will<\/a> party. Needless to say, spotlighting the views of a party actively engaged in trying to overthrow the government is not a hallmark of \u201cstate-run\u201d television.<\/p>\n

Nugent\u2019s claim is also false with regards to radio, with numerous opposition-aligned stations filling the airwaves, including most notably Radio Caracas Radio<\/strong><\/a>, while Union Radio<\/strong><\/a> is popular nationwide for its independent, even-handed coverage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An AGB Nielsen study shows that the privately owned Venevision dominates Venezuela\u2019s television news market.<\/p><\/div>\n

Print media<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nugent matter-of-factly talks about newspapers and magazines having \u201call but disappeared,\u201d as if amidst a severe economic downturn, Venezuela was expected to buck the worldwide trend of declining print media.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Venezuela does still have a number of national circulation papers, which Nugent could confirm with a visit to any Venezuelan newspaper kiosk. Moreover, as in other countries, newspapers that no longer circulate in print have continued their operations on digital platforms and social media.<\/p>\n

Today, Venezuela has five nationwide dailies still in print, the majority of which are anti-government. While \u00daltimas Noticias<\/strong><\/a> and of course state-run Correo del Orinoco<\/strong><\/a> take a pro-government line, any cursory glance at El Universal<\/strong><\/a>, Diario 2001<\/strong><\/a> and La Voz<\/strong><\/a> will find them all to be staunchly anti-Chavista.<\/p>\n

El Universal<\/strong> has a weekday circulation of 35,000, which relative to population is comparable to the Washington Post<\/strong><\/a>. \u00a0Considered the voice of the so-called \u201cmoderate\u201d opposition, the paper has been grossly misrepresented by the New York Times<\/strong>\u2019 Nick Casey (1\/16\/16<\/a>), among others, as \u201ctoe[ing] a largely pro-government line.\u201d<\/p>\n

On February 17, the newspaper published an op-ed<\/a> by one of its frequent contributors, Datanalisis pollster Luis Vicente Le\u00f3n, who nonchalantly weighs the pros and cons of a military coup, a negotiated transition \u201cpressured\u201d by criminal US sanctions<\/a> and military threats, and an outright invasion. Leon regards that last scenario favorably, so long as it takes the form of a \u201cPanama-style intervention\u201d that topples Maduro \u201cwithout greater consequences\u201d (translation: collateral damage limited to poor brown people, as in El Chorrillo<\/a>).<\/p>\n

More recently in the same paper, columnist Pedro Pi\u00f1ate (4\/4\/19<\/a>) argues that Venezuela needs to be rid of \u201cCastro-communist\u201d ideas, Francisco Olivares (4\/27\/19<\/a>) claims Maduro\u2019s ouster is \u201cvital for the Western democratic world,\u201d while Antonio Herrera (4\/25\/19<\/a>) sounds alarm bells about the presence of \u201cCubans, Russians, Iranians, Middle Eastern terrorists and guerrillas from Colombia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only do Venezuela\u2019s anti-government newspapers exercise unfettered freedom to publish, including opinion articles explicitly calling for military coups<\/a>, they have a long history of publishing explicitly racist cartoons<\/a> caricaturing Chavez and other Chavista leaders that would scandalize liberals in any Western country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

El Universal (2\/17\/19) published an op-ed, headlined \u201cVenezuelan Scenarios,\u201d that positively contemplates the outcomes of a US invasion of Venezuela.<\/p><\/div>\n

Social media<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nugent\u2019s allegations of draconian government censorship extend to the digital realm as well, as she writes:<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s Internet freedom has been weakening for several years, with the country finally dropping from \u201cpartly free\u201d to \u201cnot free\u201d in annual reports by global democracy monitor Freedom House in 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Time<\/strong> reporter fails to disclose that Freedom House<\/a> is almost entirely funded by the US government, which is currently spearheading a coup d\u2019etat in Venezuela. Bracketing that minor detail, it must be asked, is the internet really any less free in Venezuela than in the Global North?<\/p>\n

It is true that Venezuela\u2019s state phone and internet provider, CANTV, does block some Venezuelan anti-government news sites, including El Nacional<\/strong><\/a>, La Patilla<\/strong><\/a> and El Universal<\/strong><\/a>, which can only be accessed via VPN, cable or cellular data.<\/p>\n

While such a policy is indefensible and perhaps self-defeating, it must be placed in context. Would any Western government tolerate news outlets that openly serve as mouthpieces for a violent, foreign-backed opposition that is currently in the middle of its sixth major coup attempt (the 2002 Carmona coup, the 2002\u2013o3 oil lockout<\/a>, the 2013 post-election opposition violence<\/a>, the 2014<\/a> and 2017<\/a> street blockades having failed) in the past 20 years?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Freedom House, a US government\u2013funded think tank, labeled Venezuela \u201cnot free\u201d in their 2017 annual world freedom report.<\/p><\/div>\n

Given the lengths the US and UK are going to prosecute Chelsea Manning<\/a> and WikiLeaks<\/strong><\/a>, without any of them posing a real national security threat, the short answer is \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Venezuela is hardly immune from state censorship, it is a gross distortion to claim the country is \u201cnow subject to frequent information blackouts.\u201d In addition to having a decisive, if not dominant, presence in television and print media, Venezuela\u2019s right-wing opposition exerts considerable influence in social media, which has even allowed it to circulate fake news among the public. While Nugent disingenuously writes that \u201cit\u2019s not clear who is behind the false stories,\u201d it is very obvious who stands to gain from baseless rumors of \u201cthe military conscripting minors\u201d or \u201cRussian troops arriving in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, an extensive independent investigation<\/a> revealed the rampant use of \u201cautomation, coordinated inauthentic behavior and cyborgs\u201d to position anti-government hashtags on Twitter<\/strong>, with some accounts tweeting hundreds of thousands of times per day and generating billions <\/em>of daily impressions. The Venezuelan opposition has consistently looked to fire up social media<\/a> ahead of potential flashpoints, while, on the other hand, official or pro-government accounts have routinely been shut down by Western social media giants, including seven Venezuelan government accounts being suspended<\/a> by Twitter<\/strong> just recently.<\/p>\n

A recent example of Washington and its opposition clients\u2019 capacity to shape the corporate media narrative via social media is the February 23 \u201chumanitarian aid showdown<\/a>\u201d on the Venezuelan\/Colombian border (FAIR.org<\/strong>, 2\/9\/19<\/a>). Following a controversial incident involving a USAID truck catching fire, top US officials and opposition leaders immediately took to Twitter<\/strong> to blame the Maduro government. The claim was repeated<\/a> by corporate outlets, despite the existence of readily available evidence<\/a>, which the New York Times<\/strong> only reported<\/a> two weeks later, proving a Molotov cocktail\u2013wielding opposition militant set fire to the truck. The Times<\/strong>\u2019 (largely ignored) retraction notwithstanding, February 23 was a clear cut case of US\/opposition social media dominance allowing a false narrative to be put in place unquestioned.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Erin Gallagher\u2019s investigation (Medium, 1\/30\/19) revealed a social media campaign to position pro-opposition hashtags on Twitter, generating billions of daily impressions.<\/p><\/div>\n

Press freedom via coup d\u2019etat?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The narrative of a Venezuelan government crackdown on press freedom is by no means a recent invention, harkening back to the Chavez government\u2019s 2007 decision not to renew RCTV<\/strong>\u2019s<\/a> (Radio Caracas Televisi\u00f3n<\/strong>) broadcasting concession. RCTV<\/strong> had played a crucial role in the 2002 coup<\/a>, when the opposition removed Ch\u00e1vez from power for 47 hours\u2014unleashing a wave of terror<\/a>\u2014and later in the 2002\u201303 oil lockout. RCTV<\/strong> was merely removed from the public spectrum, and continued broadcasting via cable and satellite.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the episode opened the way for a fresh wave of anti-government protests, led by a new generation of middle-class right-wing student leaders, funded and trained by Washington<\/a>. Among the new opposition cohort was George Washington University\u2013educated Juan Guaid\u00f3<\/a>, himself a veteran<\/a> of the violent 2014 opposition street protests known as \u201cthe Exit,\u201d which left 43 people dead.<\/p>\n

The myth of a sustained assault on media freedom in Venezuela forms the ideological touchstone of Venezuela\u2019s anti-Chavista opposition, for whom \u201cfreedom of expression\u201d stands for unfettered private control over mass media. Given their own privileged position in a global media sphere monopolized by a tiny handful of conglomerates, corporate journalists like Nugent instinctively defend this viewpoint to absurd degrees.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Nation (2\/8\/19) reported the role the US government played in building the latest right-wing opposition movement in Venezuela.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Time <\/strong>correspondent writes, \u201cVenezuelan authorities regularly detain journalists, claiming that they have entered the country illegally or breached \u2018security zones.\u201d There are currently over 50 foreign news agencies with correspondents on the ground in Venezuela, where they need to get a special visa to report. As in the US, one cannot sneak around<\/a> restricted security areas near Miraflores Presidential Palace in the middle of the night without proper identification and accreditation. The outrage over Venezuelan government efforts to regulate media amidst a foreign-backed coup effort is grossly hypocritical, given Western journalists\u2019 failure to speak out<\/a> against their own governments\u2019 crackdown on whistleblowers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FAIR (4\/30\/19<\/a>) has previously reported<\/a> that zero percent of elite US newspaper and talk show pundits challenged the idea of regime change in Venezuela. \u00a0More than a considered or even clear-eyed view of Venezuela\u2019s media landscape, fairy tales like Nugent\u2019s about totalitarian state censorship in Venezuela reflect US corporate media regime\u2019s own self-censorship, which is far more efficacious than any so-called \u201cauthoritarian\u201d leader could imagine. Without deliberate constriction of the spectrum of \u201cacceptable opinion,\u201d after all, the Trump administration would never be able to get away with its brazenly illegal coup and an economic blockade that has already killed 40,000<\/a> Venezuelans in the past two years with total impunity.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 May 2019 – The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation\u2019s crisis has become perhaps the world\u2019s most lucrative fictional genre. Fairy tales about totalitarian state censorship in Venezuela reflect US corporate media regime\u2019s own self-censorship, which is far more efficacious than any so-called \u201cauthoritarian\u201d leader could imagine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":134237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,53,62],"tags":[1065,120,393,354,1138,378,541,559,234,754,109,287,923,70,557,126],"class_list":["post-134236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","category-media","tag-chavismo","tag-conflict","tag-coup","tag-economics","tag-fake-news","tag-journalism","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-maduro","tag-media","tag-oil","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-sanctions","tag-usa","tag-venezuela","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}