Venezuelan Government Accuses CNN and Globovisión of Inciting Violence

[Joanne98]

Caracas, May 29, 2007 (Venezuelanalysis.com)— The Venezuelan government accused CNN and the Venezuelan private channel Globovisión yesterday of using subliminal messages during their coverage of the RCTV protests to instigate violence and incite the assassination of President Hugo Chavez.

Communications Minister William Lara presented two videos as evidence of the supposed manipulations to the public and to the Attorney General's office to be investigated if the channels can be tried for "inciting to commit a crime." Both CNN and Globovisión denied the claims.

Lara presented the information yesterday, accusing the networks of a campaign against Venezuela and of associating the image of Hugo Chavez with images of violence and death. At a press conference in the Attorney General's office Lara showed a video of CNN coverage in which an image of Hugo Chavez appears next to the image of an Al Qaeda leader who was assassinated, and an image of protests in China. Lara said that experts who were consulted assured that the objective of this selection of images was to induce viewers to associate Chavez "with violence and death" and that it "breaks with the universal code of ethics in journalism."

The minister stated that they are considering taking the case before international organizations in order to counter an international campaign to discredit and attack Venezuela. Lara accused CNN of having a political bias against Venezuela since the moment Chavez appeared on the political scene and of "blatantly lying" to deceive and manipulate their viewers.

The second video presented by Lara was of the private Venezuelan channel Globovisión, during a broadcast of the program Aló Ciudadano, in which RCTV president Marcel Granier was being interviewed. While cutting to a commercial break the network showed images of the 1981 assassination of Pope John Paul II, accompanied by a song by Panamanian singer Ruben Blades that says "have faith, for this doesn't end here." In light of the recent protests against the government, the minister concluded that the video has the purpose of "inciting the assassination of the president, and this is what we have asked the Attorney General to investigate."

"As a journalist, I am worried by the poor circumstances through which Venezuelan journalism is passing," said the minister. "This steps on and destroys the Code of Ethics of any valid communicator here in Venezuela. Here what you see is the trafficking of lies."

The Ministry of Communications is requesting that the Attorney General's office begin an investigation of the issue under articles 283 and 300 of the legal code.

Globovisión denied the claims even as Minister Lara was presenting the case at the press conference. The private network divided the screen as Lara spoke, presenting on the other half of the screen the president of Globovision Alberto Federico Ravell denying the claims and challenging the minister to debate the issue.

CNN also denied the claims in a recent letter to the Venezuelan government. Vice president of CNN International Tony Maddox rejected any intention to associate the Venezuelan president with Al Qaeda or with events in China. The executive claimed that news reports that do not have any relation between them can be juxtaposed in a news segment just like they could in a newspaper or website without that intention.

CNN in Spanish and CNN International both categorically denied that they are carrying out a campaign to discredit or attack Venezuela.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2313
See also:

Video of Globovisión discussing the RCTV case and showing footage of Pope John Paul II being shot:

[Peace Patriot]

1. I love how the Venezuelans are fighting back against our war profiteering corporate

news monopolies, their coup-plotting corporate networks and the Bushite State Department (with John "death squad" Negroponte as Undersecretary for Latin America) and their Democratic colluders (such as Sen. Christopher Dodd), in their campaign to destroy the Bolivarian movement (independence and self-determination for Latin American countries, democracy and social justice), with their greedy eyes on the oil, gas, minerals, forests and other natural resources of the Andean democracies--Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, all now with leftist (majorityist) governments.

These are feisty, determined people--the Venezuelans--who have one of the healthiest political cultures in the Western Hemisphere (far better than our own), and whose elections put our system to shame on the matter of transparent vote counting.*

We should take note. Use of the public airwaves is a privilege not a right. A government license is required to use some of the inherently limited TV/radio bandwidth, and every democracy in the world regulates those licenses in some way, often demanding proof that the station is operated in the public interest. Prior to Reagan, we had the "Fair Doctrine" here, that encouraged a broader political discussion (than the fascist diet we have now) by, among other things, requiring that opposing political views (to those of the station) be given equal time. The corporate fascists had first to get rid of the "Fairness Doctrine" (and a few other things, like the progressive tax) in order to follow the Reagan Era of Greed with the Bush Era of Naked Looting--by greatly narrowing the spectrum of allowable political opinion to the right and the far right, thus to silence and demoralize the great progressive American majority.

The people of Venezuela are not taking this crap sitting down. They saved their government from a violent military coup (one that was fomented by the corporate news stations)**, they have strongly resisted the fascist propaganda, have repeatedly elected the government they want (leftist) and have paid very special attention to the transparency and fairness of their elections. And their active citizenship has paid off in a government that is acting in THEIR interest, not in the interest of global corporate predators. And when global corporate predators attack them, as they are doing now--for exercising their right to require responsible use of their public airwaves--they fight back.


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*(In Venezuela, they vote electronically, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are counted--and they furthermore handcount FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, as a check against machine fraud. Know how WE handcount? If you don't, you'd better find out, cuz that's the whole ballgame.)

**(See the Irish filmmakers documentary, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," available at AxisOfLogic.com. It documents the Venezuelans' revolt against the military coup, and also reveals just what RCTV did to help foment the coup.)

A good source on the Bolivarian revolution: www.venezuelanalysis.com.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Now IMAGINE--as John Lennon urged....

Imagine that we had a truly representative government, with honestly elected office holders...

And imagine that they feel obliged to answer to "we, the people," and to act in our interest...

And imagine "we, the people" and our leaders evaluating the public service of our major TV/radio conglomerates

on the Iraq War
on stolen elections
on the "Fairness Doctrine" (broad political spectrum reflected in news/opinion broadcasts)
on corporate gas gouging, skyrocketing medical costs, tax cuts for the rich, political and corporate corruption
on a host of important issues

And finding them sorely wanting, if not outright treasonous...

And denying them a license to use our public airwaves...

And busting up their goddamned news/entertainment/war industry conglomerates...

And giving those licenses to thousands of new, upstart, feisty news organizations (businesses, worker coops, non-profits or government funded stations), who will provide us with REAL news and opinion; and to similar artistic enterprises, to diversity the entertainment available on our public airwaves.

It's happening in Venezuela. They've gone beyond just imagining what a real democracy would be like.

It can happen here (after we restore our right to vote)!


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Free speech is not the same thing as corporate speech. Free speech is for US. For people. Not for corporations. We can shut corporations up and make them go away with no harm to free speech. If they still want to spew rightwing propaganda--and we decide to let them, with conditions--they can then give equal time to the left, in direct proportion to the time they gave to the right. Or we can consign them to printing mimeographed hate sheets from their basements, and permit no air time to fascist propaganda. These are our PUBLIC airwaves, and their use is subject to the will of the people. We revere the First Amendment and favor diversity. So we would probably permit some limited fascist crap on our airwaves, balanced with a broad spectrum of opinion, reflective of the people at large. And print media is wide open (no bandwidth limits) to all opinion. The TV/radio/newspaper/newsmagazine/entertainment monopolies, however, would be broken up. NO ONE--not the corporations, not the government, not any political faction would be allowed to dominate public discourse. Imagine!

[MasonJar]

3. I hope they kick all the right wing USA media out next. CNN should be the first to go.

I doubt that the people in Venezuela are dumb enough to allow Fox in to start with.