After shutting down a television station, the Chavez Administration calls itself the victim.
Preface
As a graduate student of International Affairs and Writing in the New School for General Studies, Antonio Sosa speaks of the damage that Hugo Chavez’s administratin has done to the freedom of Venezuelans by closing down the television station that has been a strong critic of the government. By spotlighting Sosa’s article, he wishes to inform the Parsons community about events happening in a different part of the world.
Various arms of the Chavez media apparatus (which currently consists of seven channels) have implied or stated explicitly, and always consistently, that it is the Opposition to Chavez which is waging, as they call it, Terrorismo Mediatico. In other words, after having accused RCTV (the station with the highest ratings in the country) of being an elitist and fascist channel, and after proceeding to make good on its threat to close it down, effectively relinquishing its right to broadcast over regular frequency, the Chavez Administration now says that it is the one in risk of being seriously bullied.
To call the state-run stations merely partisan would be to gravely understate the case as well as elevate the term “partisan” to an almost respectable level. These television stations are directed and anchored by people who are more than just vehement followers of the Regime, and the stations themselves are implicit extensions of state power, following line for line every point of official party policy. The journalists of the State never challenge or impugn a statement made by Hugo Chavez himself, or any of his orders, laws, or even his most thuggish insinuations (like calling for sectarian combat, if “necessary”, between the Western and Eastern sides of Caracas, the poorer and more affluent sides respectively).
The state-run stations assure Venezuelans that private media are criminalizing state policy, but this claim is always made in tandem with the common indictment that Globovision (the last private television station with the least measure of integrity) is a squalid, fringe station watched by only a handful of upper-class coup-dreaming housewives. State television anchors want it both ways, it appears, and simultaneously accuse Globovision of commanding enough of an audience to effectively and influentially “criminalize” anything at all while at the same time remaining a miserable washed-up channel with barely enough ratings to keep it running. If Globovision had the power to inspire any kind of serious political instability through it broadcast, then it would first have to hold the kind of ratings and command the kind of public confidence that the Chavez Administration would find alarming to even admit. The proportion of state-sponsored stations versus private stations is now 7:3 (and even this ratio is optimistic and perhaps even naive), so the Regime would do well to make up its mind about whether or not Globovision is in fact a threat to Chavizta media hegemony. And if it is a threat, the government might want to ask itself why so many Venezuelans are keep tuning to this lone channel.
Things, however bleak, might get bleaker still. Globovision’s legal permit to broadcast is set to expire by 2015. You can imagine rumors of a closure (but only because of purely “legal” reasons, mind you) have already begun to surface. This is alarming for another reason as well, since 2015 is a date that would seem to outlast Hugo Chavez’ second term in office––the operative word being “seem”. The other remaining private stations, Venevision and Televen, have been slowly and surreptitiously co-opted by Chavez in a capitalist checkmate that would impress and shock even in the most seasoned of free-marketers and speculators. In an ironic succession of events, Hugo Chavez has given some credence to the long-standing Socialist belief that the interests and editorial integrity of private media stations are much too accommodating of politicized investment, and their sense of journalistic objectivity much too fragile in the face of––let us say, euphemistically––financial prodding. The double irony occurs because in unwittingly proving this point, Chavez has become a beautiful example of the triangulating and maneuvering capitalist he once swore was the sole source of Venezuelan poverty and misery.
After Globovision is shut down, there will be relatively little room left for dissent in television. Still, the government maintains the RCTV closure had nothing whatsoever to do with politics. But after securing this kind of a media empire within Venezuela, who can take the government seriously when it argues that the RCTV closure was a purely judicial matter? RCTV was, de facto, the staunchest and strongest critic of the administration, and its closure, to put this in a clear American context, is the equivalent of the Bush Administration shutting down Comedy Central because of Jon Stuart’s nightly ridicule, disparagement, and impingement of government policy (RCTV had a prominent and well-respected journalist, Miguel Angel Rodriguez, in a morning news show who often fulfilled this very task and was much hated by the Chavizta camp for it).
To cite a more cruel and sinister (as well as more recent) case of censorship, one-time BBC journalist Roger Santodomingo’s car exploded just outside his home on the morning of July 4th, a few days after his resignation as editor-in-chief of Noticiero Digital, an online news magazine that takes a critical stance against Chavizta policy. It should not be counted as irrelevant that the reasons for Santodomingo’s professional abdication have to do with serious and credible death threats against his seven-year-old son. Apparently, even giving in to the demands of anonymous would-be murderers is not always enough to placate them, since the decision that Santodomingo might still prove bothersome even without his website seems to have been taken anyway. It does not take much intelligence or intuition to imagine, additionally, what the political sympathies of those who made such a decision are.
In this way, all those who sharply (and courageously) criticize Chavez and his government are accused of sedition and media terrorism while being simultaneously disenfranchised and threatened, and it is becoming painfully clear that the price of dissent is climbing higher than any are willing to pay. And all this is happening much to the joy of those who are trying to make the rest of us believe they are the victims.
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