Venezuela, Myanmar Governments Use Media to Attack Freedom

Myanmar (formerly Burma) has been using its state media to smear its most pormintent dissident, who won election in a landslide in 1990 but was prevented from taking office by the junta who has placed her under house arrest. Reuters reports:

Burmese state media organisations today widened their attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi, accusing the imprisoned pro-democracy leader of tax evasion.

One government-run newspaper claimed Ms Suu Kyi - who has spent 11 of the past 17 years in detention and remains under house arrest - was evading taxes by spending her money from the 1991 Nobel peace prize and other awards overseas.

The opposition leader was awarded the Nobel prize for her non-violent resistance to the Burmese military junta which crushed the democracy movement to seize power in 1988.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, democratically elected President Hugo Chavez has declined to renew the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas Television (known popularly as RCTV):

As Chavez accelerates his country’s shift toward “21st-century socialism,” a decision not to renew RCTV’s broadcast license is among the government’s more dramatic steps, and one that has caused serious concern among free-press advocates. While Venezuelan officials have accused the 54-year-old station of having collaborated with organizers of a 2002 coup against Chavez, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, the Organization of American States and the Catholic Church have warned that press freedoms in Venezuela are in danger.

The case has attracted widespread attention from officials in Washington and Latin America, for whom the non-renewal of a license has echoes of right-wing dictatorships of the past, when newspapers and broadcasters were closed if they veered from the party line. Though self-censorship and slayings of journalists remain common, particularly in Colombia and Mexico, the closing of a media outlet for political reasons has not occurred in years.

“The RCTV case is clearly a case of censorship and the most grave step back in the region since Fujimori,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, referring to widespread manipulation of the media by Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. “Chavez is not renewing the concession to punish a medium for its opposition to the government.”

RCTV produces Venezuela’s sappy soaps, known as telenovelas, which are wildly popular and have been exported to more than 80 countries. It runs an academy that trained 5,600 actors, journalists and technicians last year, and its news operation has 250 staff members and offices in 10 cities across the country.

Much to the bane of the government, it also features Miguel Angel Rodriguez, whose three-year-old program, “The Interview,” makes mincemeat of Chavez’s government every weekday morning. Sitting before a giant screen where Chavez’s speeches are replayed, Rodriguez and his guests, usually staunch foes of Chavez, dissect the president’s statements and declare his government anti-democratic and incompetent.

Popularity: 1% [?]

RCTV was directly complicit, through a deliberate disinformation campaign, in the nearly-successful overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela. To say that they violated the terms of their licence to serve the public interest is an understatement!. Forget the broadcast licence - why aren’t RCTV’s corporate officers in prison?

Recall that broadcasters are held to serving the public interest her in the US too - if the FCC would enforce the law.

The Channel 2 licence will still be avaialble to any and all responsible applicants who will serve the public interest.

RCTV will also still be broadcasting via a very substantial cable system…

When I opened the link to this article I was afraid it would be a rehash of a press release by Reporters Without Borders, which receives ongoing funding from the U.S. State Department. I’m glad that Media Channel isn’t promoting the group, which has Saatchi and Saatchi to do that work for them. However I think it is improper not to byline articles which present only one point of view–especially when that point of view is shared by coup plotters in the United States and Venezuela’s corporate media.

Newspapers publish editorials by anonymous writers in which they make all kinds of unsupported allegations, free of accountability. I don’t think Media Channel should copy this practice. If your writer uses State Department-funded sources (or the CPJ, which is part of the echo chamber) to condemn Venezuela, he or she should say so and put his or her name and contact information on the article.