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--the corporate-run TV station that applauded suspension of the constitution, the courts, the national assembly and all civil rights, that colluded in the kidnapping of the president and the end of Venezuelan democracy, that hosted the coupsters, that lied for them and put false video footage on TV!
Use of the public airwaves has responsibilities that are imposed with licensing requirements in every country in the world. There IS no "right" to corporate "speech" on the public airwaves.
In fact, corporations have no rights at all. They require charters and licenses from the PUBLIC--the true "sovereigns," "we the people," acting through our elected governments--to do business. They have no inherent right to exist. They have no right to do business. They are PERMITTED to do so, by the People, if what they are doing is in the public interest.
That's the theory anyway. And that's how the laws are written. And that's how it should be in any democracy. That's how it is in Venezuela. But that isn't how it is here, any more, despite the laws that say so. Here, media corporations not only get to use their news/opinion departments in the interest of their own profits, with no requirement for providing objective news coverage, balanced political opinion or public service, like we used to require, but they also have MONOPOLIZED the PUBLIC airwaves, so that they are the only ones who get to speak and their viewpoint is the only one people hear. This is outrageous! And it is why the Chavez government's efforts to get some kind of balance in the use of the public airwaves has been so vilified by the corpo-fascist press. They want THEIR speech to be the ONLY speech. THEY are the tyrants!
I just saw this in a Rotters article--treating Rafael Correa's, president of Ecuador's, weekly TV show in which he counters their criticisms of his leftist policies as if it were an assault on free speech. I couldn't believe it. The president bothers to talk to the people, to explain his policies, to counter criticism--and they can't stand it! He's a "dictator," too, don't ya know? He dares to speak!
When the RCTV coup occurred in Venezuela in 2002, they refused to let any members of the Chavez government speak on TV. They banned everybody in the legitimate, elected government! Then they started crying about "free speech" when the Chavez government finally took their license away--the sob heard round the globe.
It would be funny if it weren't so lethal. (Cuz the next thing they were gonna do was kill all the leftists. They had lists of Chavez government members and key supporters and their locations and put them on TV to direct the rightwing mobs!)
Free speech, my friggin ass!
And, yes, there are DUers and operatives of various kinds at DU who support this corporate crap--that it is Chavez who opposes free speech and not RCTV and not the New York Slimes and the Associated Pukes and Rotters and the whole lot of them! And come here and unrecommend a post telling us of yet more rightwing violation of other peoples' rights, and yet more rightwing tyranny, that is enabled by, and supported by, these so-called 'news' organizations and our own government.
Sneakily, anonymously unrecommending that others pay attention to this.
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