Does the US Constitution consider Venezuelan TV Station treasonous?

[antiimperialist]

If RCTV, the Venezuelan TV station that sided with the coupist group in 2002 were located in the US, and had acted in a similar behavior here, would Article 3, Section 3 of the US Constitution have applied to them? You be the judge:

Section 3 - Treason Note

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

The Nation magazine tells us various ways that seem to qualify as "aid and comfort" to the enemy. From February 2003:

All this helps explain why, in the days leading up to the April coup, Venevisión, RCTV, Globovisión and Televen replaced regular programming with relentless anti-Chávez speeches, interrupted only for commercials calling on viewers to take to the streets: "Not one step backward. Out! Leave now!" The ads were sponsored by the oil industry, but the stations carried them free, as "public service announcements."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030303/klein

[Igel]

1. If it were acting at the behest of Venezuela, yes.

Otherwise, it's sedition, not treason.

If a US station calls for people to go out and march, it's fine. If it calls for violence, there are laws pertaining precisely to incitement to riot. If it calls for overthrow of the government, it depends on the phrasing and the means to be used; people here regularly call for ousting *, but the methods called for are fine--elections and impeachment/removal from office. But people here also call for mass protest; as long as they call for peaceful protest, there's no problem ... even if the peaceful protest cripples DC.

[ProudDad]

2. I hope you aren't naive enough

to think that RCTV was urging peaceful protest against President Chavez?

[Igel]

3. Unless you can prove or show that the

wording used incited riot or tumult or that they knew that would be the planned income, it doesn't matter what I'm naive enough (or not) to think.

That's the glory of holding people responsible for what's provable. The translations that I've seen (and I'd be just as happy with them in the original) are at least two-way ambiguous. Before the events, I'd have said they were almost certainly promoting a massive protest; my personal political proclivities say that's ok, regardless of the politics of the person or group being protested, although I draw the line at shutting down a city through protest.

After the events, hindsight wants to say they were probably in a conspiracy promoting a coup, since that's what abductive and post-hoc reasoning suggests. But I don't necessarily judge things by hindsight, that's far too facile, since I can't assume that every result was the intended result (from my own life, I know that's a risible assumption). Since the quotes I've seen are ambiguous on their face, I'd want some evidence that the broadcasters intended the protests they were promoting to result in a coup. I haven't seen it. I've seen allegations that one side in a political struggle has secret evidence, but that's no more believable in Venezuela than in the US.

Now, this is a view that's concerned with justice in the narrow sense of 'guilt' and 'innocence', an older view of 'fairness' that assumes a disinterested and reasonable process, not the political and teleological view of justice and fairness that's fairly common these days and which was, alas, fairly common in other systems in days past.