Radio Caracas TV loses its license

---

Venezuela took an important step towards democratizing its media on May 28 when a billion dollar media corporation lost its television broadcast license to “those who almost never have a voice,” in President Hugo Chávez’s words. 

In response Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) and its multi-millionaire owner, Marcel Granier, claimed that “independent media are being closed down,” that Chávez was a dictator intent on “restricting freedom of expression and democratic rights.” 

Reporters without Borders declared that RCTV losing its license was “a serious attack on editorial pluralism,” while editorials in U.S. newspapers predictably misrepresented the controversy, claiming Chávez was retaliating against critics in the opposition media who “disagree” with the Bolívarian revolution. 

The reality is rather different. Reporters without Borders doesn’t mention—perhaps understandably, given its financing by the U.S. State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy—that RCTV was an active participant in the violent coup that deposed President Chávez for almost 48 hours in 2002. 

On the day of the coup, RCTV abandoned all pretense of impartial reporting, calling opposition supporters to demonstrate at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas while the on screen message “Ni un paso atras” (“Not one step back”) flashed. 

 It deliberately showed film from one angle to falsely claim that Chávez supporters were firing on opposition demonstrators, when another camera angle would have shown that Chávez supporters were defending themselves from sniper attacks—no opposition demonstrators were in sight. The repeated broadcasting of this film was then used as justification for military officers to declare their “disobedience” to the president and these declarations were faithfully broadcast to attempt to legitimize a military takeover.  

U.S. editorials failed to mention all this and also failed to comment on the Venezuelan media’s support for the subsequent fascist junta that took control in Caracas and which proceeded to dismiss the entire Supreme Court and the Congress, suspend the constitution, arrest the democratically-elected president, and then send armed police into the streets to suppress resistance. 

A junta member, Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, thanked journalists on live TV the day after the coup, saying that the organizers “had a weapon—the media—let me congratulate you.” The junta chose businessperson Pedro Carmona to be “president” and summoned media executives to Miraflores to ensure that opposition to the coup was not reported. 

RCTV’s boss, Granier, denied he ever met Carmona during the coup, despite film footage showing his presence at Miraflores. 

As Venezuelans took to the streets in the thousands to demand the return of President Chávez, fighting the police and demonstrating at Miraflores against the coup, RCTV, contrary to the constant coverage it awarded the opposition demonstration, intentionally blacked out this breaking news. As RCTV production manager at the time, Andrés Izarra, later related, Granier ordered journalists “not to broadcast information on Chávez, his supporters, or anyone connected to him.” 

The Chávez demonstrators coming from the poor shanty towns up in the mountains above Caracas encouraged soldiers loyal to the president to take back Miraflores and arrest the junta. Helicopters were sent to the Caribbean island where the president had been kept prisoner and, barely 48 hours after the right-wing attempt to take Venezuela back to the military dictatorship of the 1950s, the coup failed and Chávez returned to an ecstatic welcome. 

However, none of the resistance to the coup, the junta’s arrest, or Chavez’s return could be seen on television. During probably the most dramatic day in Venezuela’s recent history, RCTV was showing Looney Tunes cartoons.  

Other opposition media followed its lead. No rightist newspapers were printed or distributed the following day, but the leftist Últimas Noticias in Caracas told Venezuelans what had happened and the Chávista Panorama newspaper published 4 editions in 20 hours as its journalists reported on the coup’s stunning defeat. 

No journalists or media executives were jailed or prosecuted after the coup and once the opposition-dominated Supreme Court declared that, in their opinion, “no coup had taken place,” Pedro Carmona and others were released. 

The right once again went on the offensive. Granier’s RCTV abandoned any pretence at professional journalism, concerning itself with the political impact of its news broadcasts, rather than adhering to anything that resembled journalistic ethics. In all, 5 private television stations, reaching 90 percent of Venezuelan viewers, and 9 of the 10 national newspapers, supported the opposition. 

Despite U.S. newspaper editorialists claiming that the state is restricting criticism of President Chávez, it is clear to anyone who reads these newspapers or watches Venezuela TV that the vast majority are implacably hostile to the revolution and critical of President Chavez. There is no censorship, as there is in U.S. client states such as Saudi Arabia and journalists are not intimidated or assassinated as in México and Colombia. 

President Bush’s recent claim that Venezuela has “repressive laws” that “severely restrict the liberty of the press,” hardly stands up to scrutiny, especially when, as Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Rodríquez pointed out, “The only television channel closed down for political reasons during this Bolívarian administration was the pro-Chávez Channel 8 in 2002. It was taken off the air on the first night of the coup by Pedro Carmona’s fascist junta.” 

The disproportionate criticism has more to do with Chávez’s challenge to the unaccountable elite that clearly limits “editorial pluralism” by using its ownership and control of the media to present its privileged interests as those of all Venezuelans. Accustomed to operating their lucrative commercial television channels for decades without democratic oversight, this elite has come to believe this privileged position is their right. 

Chávez has pointed out that broadcasting licenses are not granted in perpetuity. In fact, Venezuelan law and the Bolívarian Constitution confer certain responsibilities, such as ensuring the public receives “true and accurate information,” on the media corporations that are granted these concessions, as does the respective media laws in the United States and most other countries. 

RCTV’s concession to broadcast expired May 28. The government decided not to renew them, citing, among other crimes such as not paying taxes, the station’s failure to provide “true and accurate information” during the 2002 coup, when its executives intentionally refused to report breaking news and critical information to the public and imposed its cartoon blackout. “This decision is an irreversible fact,” William Lara, Venezuela’s Communications and Information Minister, declared. “The Constitutional, legal, and regulatory basis for the decision is solidly incontrovertible.” For the first time in Venezuela, the privileged media elite had come up against a government that could not be bought, bribed, or intimidated. 

A new television service, Televisora Venezolana Social (Venezuelan Social TV or TEVES), will take over, Chávez has announced. It will be run by an independent foundation and have independent, community, and alternative programming. 

Although the new TEVES station will initially receive government financing, which the British state financed BBC rather ironically claimed “might affect its independence,” it will not be required to broadcast government programs, such as Chávez’s “¡Alo, Presidente!,” and it will be able to take commercial advertising to eventually allow it to be self financing. 

Corporate media in almost all countries is often unresponsive, unaccountable, and inaccessible, permitting virtually no popular participation in production and programming. Venezuela’s attempt to start to democratize the broadcast media has been met with predictable criticism from that corporate media who continue to insist that a tiny, wealthy elite—and not a democratic government elected with a massive popular vote—should have the right to control what is seen and heard on the airwaves. 

As for Granier and RCTV, some in the opposition believe it is no loss to have the station lose its license. “RCTV wasn’t even good at propaganda,” wrote one anti-Chávez columnist, citing Chávez’s return after the coup and his landslide election win in 2006. But all is not lost for the anti-Chávez opposition. RCTV can still broadcast on cable and satellite and should there be news it doesn’t like, it will be free to black it out with as many Looney Tunes cartoons as it likes. 

Z 

---

Paul Haste is a British trade unionist studying in Colombia. He has worked for the Transport and General Workers’ Union in London, where he ran the Latin American Workers’ Association that unionized immigrant workers.